


blood to bleed, mouths to feed

by mockturtletale



Series: Turf Wars [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, F/M, Found Family, Loss, M/M, Magic, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Pack Bonding, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 11:44:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/925991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing in Derek’s experience suggests that family can be found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blood to bleed, mouths to feed

**Author's Note:**

> This takes everything up to the final episode of season two as canon, but departs from there dramatically. This is essentially what I needed to read after the first few episodes of season three aired, because I thought to myself "god fucking damn it why couldn't they just spend the entire summer learning how to be a pack, why can't Derek Hale ever have nice things." So the theme here is just that - found family, everyone coming together to do their best for one another after everything they've all been through rather than betraying and blaming one another in circumstances that mess everything up further and for no good reason. The alpha pack appear here, but not as they do on the show. 
> 
> Given that reliance on everything pre-season three as acknowledged canon, this story includes brief and non graphic mentions of past abuse in the cases of characters like Isaac and Derek etc. 
> 
> Their ages are guessed at and fudged for convenience, aside from Derek's canon age of 24. Stiles, Erica, Cora, Boyd, Lydia, Allison and Danny are 17, Scott and Isaac are 18. 
> 
> Stiles is further exploring the magical side of things through this, and Lydia is acknowledged to maybe not be human, but is not a banshee. Banshees do play a part in this story, but she's not one of 'em. Jackson has stuck around, and Boyd and Erica are both alive. For justice.

 

 

Several very important things happen over the course of that summer in Beacon Hills.

 

Erica and Boyd reappear, alive and as well as can be expected after their brushes with Gerard and the alpha pack. As usual, Derek can count on the most monstrous people he comes in contact with to be human, because it’s at Gerard’s hands that they suffer most. The alpha pack half-heartedly try to test them - test _Derek_ \- but ultimately they only came to see Cora home, and she keeps them more or less in hand during their stay. They don’t want to give her up, but they know she’ll never do what it would take to make her theirs. They say they know this at least; Deucalion with wonder, Kali with scorn. Ennis with something shining in his eyes.

Derek doesn’t know this, because she’s his sister but he has forgotten how to love and trust like a brother.

In what will be remembered as the first stroke of luck Derek Hale ever experienced, the summer months stay quiet in the wake of the alpha pack, and on some days he even lets himself hope that Gerard is dead somewhere, decaying into the earth and rotting in hell.

Derek mourns one sister as he finds another, and tries to strike a balance with Peter that’s not love or trust or family, but something like begrudged and fragile respect.

Derek builds his pack, and readies himself to lead.

Peace doesn’t come easy between him and Scott, but what matters is that it does come. The hunter girl and the redhead that is some kind of other (not human, or as human as they come) are intrinsic to the process, and with the unexpected addition of Jackson comes the tall, built Lacrosse player with tanned skin and that angular face, the dimples.

Isaac is by Derek’s side through it all, closer to him for having lost Boyd and Erica, if only for a short time.

They come together as a family, because that’s what each and every single one of them needs. And wants, more than anything. They start out faking it until they figure out if they can ever make it real, but they’re all motivated and Derek finds some kind of faith to have in what is left of his family and a group of teenage friends, only some of whom owe him their loyalty.

Stiles grows his hair out that summer, and Derek only ever means to add that to the list as a footnote, an afterthought. He doesn’t know why he includes it at all, because it doesn’t seem like it will come to matter, in the grand scheme of things.

 

As usual, Derek is wrong.

 

____

 

After they lose Gerard and find Jackson, everyone needs a break.

Jackson and Lydia retreat to lick their wounds, hole up in the revelations that saved them both and changed everything.

Derek overhears Isaac on the phone to Scott that night, and he disappears for a few hours the next day, returns smelling like Scott and Stiles and home cooking, carrying the faint strains of disinfectant and fresh blood that isn’t a wolf’s.

Boyd and Erica limp home in the middle of it all, bracketing Cora, and Derek falls to his knees and cries for the first time in years. It doesn’t make him feel better. It doesn’t feel like anything. Derek doesn’t know what to say or what to do, but it feels like he stumbled into the right answer when he does nothing at all to try and find it. The beginnings of his pack hunkers down in the tiny town of their abandoned subway cars, and they’re joined eventually by what is left of what used to be Derek’s family.

Scott wanders into the space days later, followed by Jackson, Lydia, Allison and Danny.

Stiles doesn’t show then, but he’s there for their first ever attempt at something like a pack pre-meeting. The test run of co-operation. He doesn’t contribute, and he’s stripped of more than just his words. He’s beat up and broken in places that skin and bone can’t reach.

They regroup.

And then they begin to learn bigger, better, more important ways to do that.

 

____

 

Danny and Jackson decide that ‘they’ - a ‘they’ that includes Derek, and everyone else - should take a day trip to the beach.

They surf every summer, and although Derek suspects it’s Danny’s idea to include everyone, for reasons Derek doesn’t know and can’t begin to understand, Jackson becomes hell bent on the idea. Probably because Derek thinks it’s a bad one.

They’ve all lost so much, and even though they’ve all still got more to lose, Derek is tired of running; of adding meaningful connection to the long and painful list of what must be evaded at all cost. He doesn’t give himself over to the promise of family the way some of them do. He’s desperate for it too, but he’s not ready to let anyone see that. It won’t kill him to stop counting on every single thing going wrong, though. Probably.

Jackson is Derek’s chance to give a little. He has learned from Scott, from Isaac and Boyd and Erica, and Jackson is different from them all, but maybe only in ways that make him like the person Derek is now.

Derek gives him the win, because it doesn’t cost him anything to do so.

 

_____

 

Jackson arrives that morning in an SUV that no-one questions, and no-one thought to think about figuring out a plan for who gets to the beach how, but Derek is hardly going to produce a clipboard and start assigning cars. They have enough vehicles between them, and he doesn’t care.

Lydia, Danny and Allison ride with Jackson. Erica climbs into Peter’s car after him, and Boyd follows after a pause. After some kind of complex, coded conversation conducted in nothing but raised eyebrows and a series of scowls on Stiles’ end, Scott and Isaac drive off in his jeep.

Stiles looks between Derek and Cora and tries to smile.

“There were three in the camaro and the human one said ‘can we stop for snacks’?” he half-hums, and it’s clearly a stretch for him. He’s not bouncing on the balls of his feet, and his hands hang motionless by his sides. His bruise is taking forever to heal, but the stitches have dissolved from his lip.

Cora snorts at him, and Derek doesn’t leave him behind.

 

_____

 

Derek didn’t think to bring swim trunks, because he can’t remember the last time he needed to wear anything other than jeans, but Lydia tosses him a pair in his size when they arrive, and Danny hands him a brand new surfboard. The SUV contains surfing and swim gear for everyone, and Derek doesn’t question it, doesn’t say thanks. Isaac’s effusive gratitude probably covers it.

They surf for hours, all of them. Derek is surprised to see Lydia paddle out right alongside Jackson, and not at all surprised to see Allison beat Scott and Stiles to waves all afternoon, something sharp about her smile. Stiles doesn’t fall as much as you’d think he might, and there’s something painfully familiar about watching Cora surface from the water shaking her hair back out of her face. Derek’s heart stops every time he has to wait, anyway. Erica is the best of the bunch, but she and Danny cheer Derek on when he catches and nails a particularly daunting wave. Isaac sticks to the small ones, and Peter doesn’t swim out until they all traipse back onto sand to eat. Derek buys everyone burgers, and Peter doesn’t belong. Not yet, and maybe not ever again. Derek wonders if he himself does.

Danny directs them all. He swims up next to them each in turn and sits on his board letting the beginnings of good waves roll under him so he can give them tips in ways that don’t feel like instruction or criticism. He’s still and quiet like Body, but something about him speaks to the same kind of barbed ability Lydia keeps under wraps, the bubbling enthusiasm that bursts out of Stiles sometimes. Derek listens to Danny’s advice and finds that it helps him. The next time he passes he claps him on the shoulder, hard, and Danny bites back a smile.

That afternoon is the first time Derek has ever seen Jackson smile in joy, and something about the grin he flashes all afternoon proves contagious. They’re all laughing by the time they pile back into their cars, and Derek’s body is tired in a way that he finds far more satisfying than a workout or the kind of fight that pumps him full of adrenaline and then drains him of everything he has.

Cora falls asleep in the passenger seat and Derek concentrates on the road, becomes so focused on what’s in front of them that he doesn’t realize he has reached out to take hold of Cora’s hand until Stiles sits forward to touch Derek’s shoulder; some kind of comfort. Neither of them acknowledge Derek’s wet cheeks and Stiles doesn’t sit back in his seat until Cora wakes up to demand they stop for a pee break. Once she has completely and unknowingly ruined the moment, she stumbles sleepily out of the car in search of a restroom and Stiles puts his forehead to the back of Derek’s seat and laughs, and Derek can’t quite manage that yet, but when he catches Stiles’ eye in the rear view mirror he offers up a soft kind of eye roll, and Stiles blushes. It makes his bruises look worse. When Cora returns she hands Derek a slushie, the flavor he’d favored … before. She tosses a packet of red vines right at Stiles, and he doesn’t react in time to catch them before they bean him in the face but he doesn’t complain either.

Cora always did show kindness in tiny, hard ways.

At least she remembers how to show it, Derek thinks with something that’s supposed to be like pride.

 

____

 

They all drive back to the loft that Derek has always had but never felt like he deserved the luxury of. He still doesn’t, but space is becoming important for other reasons. He’s expecting them all to swap car keys and sort their stuff into the right hands, drive away then - drive home. But they all spill out into the parking lot and follow Derek upstairs, and he’s still trying to figure out who the hell broke into his place to stock it with enough plates and glasses for more than one person when the doorbell goes. Derek comes back into the wide open space that serves as some kind of living room tonight just in time to see Jackson exchange a wad of cash for a stack of pizzas nearly too tall to carry. Allison goes to help him, and Derek finds himself caught in the middle of a heated debate over what dvd to watch, and he almost interrupts to correct the assumption that he even has a dvd player or any dvds, but Stiles crosses in front of him with his laptop in one hand, some kind of cord that he uses to hook the thing up to Derek’s tv in the other.

They watch a movie about a bunch of blonde surfer chicks because over the clamor Danny quietly suggests it and Allison puts away as much pizza as any of the wolves. Lydia gives more of her attention to watching Peter than she does to watching the movie, but Derek keeps an ear out for her heartbeat, because he doesn’t know how to say he’s sorry. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to be, or even if he is. Her heart stays steady, and Derek wonders how much of that is mind over matter. He wonders why he cares.

Derek mostly agreed to all of this to prove to himself and to them that this was a stupid idea. That whatever comfort they were seeking wouldn’t be found here, in this. They’re a venn diagram of teenagers and werewolves, and maybe they all want the same thing but that doesn’t mean that if they stick together they’ll find it.

Nothing in Derek’s experience suggests that family can be found.

That day is Danny and Jackson’s show, and Derek doesn’t feel like an alpha with a pack, but he’s not sure he wants to lead, at that point. The control that comes with _giving_ is a kind of self control, or something that shows Derek that he’s capable of it.

 

____

 

Isaac accidentally drops and smashes a glass as he and Scott take their group-voted turn at clean up, and his heartbeat skyrockets, his breathing gets shallow. Derek jumps over the back of the couch to get to him and he doesn’t realize Danny follows until he’s the one to cross the kitchen floor to get to Isaac, Derek frozen useless in the doorway, mirroring Scott across the room.

Danny drops to his knees next to Isaac, who has curled up in a ball with his back to the wall, and doesn’t touch him, but speaks to him steadily in low, soothing tones until Isaac’s claws recede and his fangs disappear, his forehead smooth again.

At a look from Danny, Scott and Derek back out of the room, both of them keeping their eyes on Isaac even as they leave.

When Danny leads Isaac out of the kitchen the room seems to collectively breathe a sigh of relief, and seeing Jackson, Peter, Cora, Boyd and Erica relax in turn makes Derek feel like that breathe leaves him lighter.

 

____

 

Jackson asks a firmly light question midway through the movie, something completely stupid about werewolves and their ability to breathe underwater. But it’s a question, and it’s about werewolves. Erica starts to answer, until Cora puts a hand on her arm and shakes her head minutely.

Derek speaks, and everyone listens.

The silence that follows is broken by Scott dumping a handful of popcorn down the back of Boyd’s shirt, seemingly by the kind of accident that only Scott McCall can ever manage.

 

____

 

After everyone who doesn’t live here now leaves Derek carries the leftover pizza into the kitchen to find Stiles still there, on his knees on the tile. He’s carefully picking up the pieces of broken glass by hand, because Derek has never had a dustpan.

“Don’t,” Derek says, because Stiles won’t heal in an instant if he cuts himself.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stiles says without looking up, and it doesn’t sound like he’s referring to how he’s almost done, anyway.

 

____

 

It’s Cora’s idea to read everyone in on what’s happening with the alpha pack.

Derek isn’t ready to acknowledge instant recognition for the term ‘everyone’, let alone think of the group as being safe to share his secrets with, but Peter hears what Derek doesn’t say and answers questions he’ll never ask.

“We’re not talking about giving them our complete family history, nephew. Just the bare bones of what’s coming for us _today_. It’s the alpha pack’s secrets we’d be giving up, not our own, and who is to say these teen avengers of yours won’t be targets in all of this? They’re all implicit by association now, whether you like it or not. The bitten ones must know, there’s no question of that. But some of the others have already proven themselves useful. It would be wise of us to continue to capitalize on their loyalty. While it lasts.”

It’s not hard to read between the lines. Peter is saying they should use whoever they need and not shy from the opportunity to kill anyone who becomes a problem.

Cora stands looking at Derek from the window, not saying a word. Waiting.

“We read them in on what they need to know to stay out of this,” Derek decides. “If they’ve got ideas that might help we let them contribute to the plan, but they’re not getting involved, not the humans.”

“No-one’s going to get hurt,” Cora insists, like that’s a promise she can make, or one anyone has ever kept to Derek.

“We tell them only what they need to know,” Derek says, final, and he bites back a bitter laugh.

 

____

 

“So does one go inside the other? Or do they mash together? Does it have two heads? Four fists? What do you _call_ it?”

Stiles smirks at Scott’s confusion, and it momentarily distracts Derek from planning how to throw them all out of the loft at once.

“It’s not like - it’s just one big guy, okay? But you need to be able to recognize them apart, you all need to be familiar with what the alpha pack looks like so you don’t walk into anything you can’t handle.”

Jackson and Isaac start arguing about what they can and can’t handle, and Derek wants to knock their skulls together.

Allison stands up and makes her way to Derek’s side, neatly kicking Jackson in the ribs and pinching Isaac hard on the neck as she passes between them.

“Listen up,” she says, firm but not commanding, and even Derek pays attention. Allison doesn’t give orders, but she makes it clear that you’re going to want to listen to what she has to say.

“Deucalion. Blind. Dark glasses, cane. Kinda dad-like,” she muses, holding up the first of the sketches Cora and Lydia had worked on this afternoon. Peter begins to protest and collectively the room ignores him.

“Kali. Dark hair. Mean in the face. Not fond of shoes. Ennis. Mean looking all over. Big. Hulking. The twins - Aiden and Ethan. Our age. Squishy faces. You’ll know their combined form when you see it, so try not to see it.”

She holds up sketches as she goes, and Derek doesn’t have to look at sheets of paper to remember those faces. He watches the group instead, ignores Peter where he’s sitting halfway up the spiral staircase. Everyone else is sitting on the floor in front of the table Derek hasn’t gotten around to moving away from the window. Derek is always very well aware of their age, and how that’s not the only thing about them that makes them _young_ , but there’s something almost childlike in how they’re sitting here, plopped on their butts in the middle of his loft, their eyes moving back and forth between Allison and the sketches she shows them in unison, as a group. Derek instinctively wants to put himself between their backs and the door. It’s habit, that’s all.

When she’s done, Allison looks to Cora for approval or correction, but Cora just nods and steps up behind the table on Derek’s other side.

“Remember, these are all alphas, so any kind of injury you sustain at their hands will be a bitch to heal.”

“But why do they want to fight us,” Isaac interrupts, “Aren’t they friends of yours? Why are they still here?” That kid seems to be built of questions, most days.

“They’re testing me,” Derek says, fighting the urge to apologize for something that isn’t his fault. He didn’t want everyone involved, he didn’t force them to come here today.

“Ideally,” Derek continues, trying not to wince at the taste that word leaves in his mouth, “No-one but me will get hurt. Maybe I won’t either. They have no real business here and they won’t stay for long, but they’re a pack of alphas. Power is their wheelhouse, and I’ve got to show that I’ve got what it takes to live up to our claim on this territory. If I don’t, they might be tempted to make a bid for it themselves. Not because they need or want it, but because they can. I have to prove to them that it’d be more trouble than it’s worth.”

“And you’re sure about this? All we have to do is show them we’re not backing down?” Derek knows Boyd already knows the answer to that question, because Derek has talked to his wolves about this. He answers for the same reason Boyd asked - to put everyone else at ease.

“Cora has been with them for a long time,” he says, trying not to think about that time at all, “She knows how this goes, and this is routine for them.”

“So we’re looking at a mission to protect and secure, primarily?” Danny asks, and even though he’s addressing Derek he’s looking at Stiles and Lydia.

“Yes?” Derek doesn’t know where this is going.

“Okay,” Stiles says, unfolding himself from the floor and dusting off his pants. “Me and Danny and Lydia have got research to do, Allison we’ll need you for the usual and although I’m loathe to say it, you probably have information that will prove useful, Peter. Cora, can you tell us more about their individual abilities?” Her raised eyebrow is about as positive an answer as he’s going to get, because Cora doesn’t take quickly or kindly to new people, but she accepts the cell phone he proffers when he tells her that it’s hers, and his number is programmed into it. How Cora now has a new iphone when Derek is still working with a blackberry he has no idea. He doesn’t ask.

“The rest of you probably have a bunch of supernatural sparring stuff to do, right?” Stiles prompts, looking to Boyd rather than Derek, and Derek isn’t offended. He doesn’t acknowledge the slight, either.

“Jackson, Scott, be back here early tomorrow morning, we’ll train together.” He doesn’t suggest that they all do everything together from here on out, because maybe there’s safety in numbers, but things haven’t quite gotten that bad. Not yet.

“Stiles, call me if you need anything,” Derek dismisses the humans, knowing that they won’t call, and if they do it won’t be Stiles.

They part ways, and Derek doesn’t lose any sleep that night worrying about the safety of a group of kids who aren’t even pack.

 

____

 

All in all, it takes one week of research and one day of execution to neutralize the alpha pack’s threat.

Cora disappears for hours here and there, summoned by Stiles, and Peter is hardly ever at the loft, but he doesn’t show up dead again so Derek figures it’s a safe bet that he isn’t spending all that much time with ‘Team Research’, as they’ve christened themselves, and as Derek will never refer to them out loud. Stiles and Jackson have found some unexpected common ground in their fierce hatred for Peter, so Derek would wager that he’s been out in the woods with Allison, running practical tests for the theory Stiles and Lydia and Danny compile.

Jackson improves significantly, and finds his feet faster than any of the other wolves did, as he’s glad to remind them. He’s stupidly smug, still, maybe even more so now, but Derek thinks he detects some small hint of humility in him through their one on one training. Derek has helped Jackson in some kind of competition against himself and if Derek didn’t know better he’d say he seems almost grateful. He really does seem more centered, though, and with that comes a greater sense of ease in the larger group dynamic.

Stiles and Lydia and Danny come up with most of the methods they use, but Derek is the one to decide how this all plays out, how it all fits together. He isn’t exactly excited when he finds that the humans have all but handcuffed themselves to the process by making it so they’re integral to what has to happen, but Cora assures him that the alpha pack won’t attack unless Derek attacks first. They’ve all been involved in much worse, right in the middle of things that they walked into accidentally or barreled headfirst into the fray of, and Derek will be there if anything goes wrong. For the first time in forever, he’s almost confident that it won’t.

Part of their plan involves mountain ash, but Danny is the one to use it. Stiles coaches him through it, but it’s Danny’s belief that traps the alpha pack inside the building they’ve set up camp in. Derek doesn’t ask why Stiles can’t do it himself, doesn’t wonder at how he apparently has two human teenagers to hand who believe in what he’s doing enough to have that fuel their very own kind of magic.

With the alphas trapped inside, they attack the building from all sides simultaneously. Allison and her father shoot wolfsbane arrows through one wall of windows. Danny directs Boyd and Erica in blowing half the building apart with homemade explosives, and before the dust has even cleared Lydia, Scott, Jackson and Isaac are lined up to toss smaller explosives right into the the warehouse, explosives infused with both chemical and magical elements and specifically designed to immobilize. At the front of the building Derek, Peter and Cora stand ready, the strongest wolves in the pack.

It’s a symbolic attack. The alpha pack are driven cowering into the center of their lair, cornered from all sides by a variety of means, and the wolves have yet to so much as extend a claw.

And just like that, the alpha pack are dispatched. They leave town the next day with promises and invitations left for Cora, threats thinly veiled as congratulations for Derek, and a worryingly speculative look for Jackson.

Derek puts his hand on Jackson’s shoulder in some kind of warning, but is surprised to feel Jackson relax into the touch, go still under Derek’s palm like Derek makes him feel safe.

They’re still making this up as they go along, and things continue to unexpectedly go their way.

 

____

 

The celebration that follows is strangely subdued.

Derek is hardly the life of any party, but tonight he is relieved, and he goes to no great lengths to hide that. He’s a little more careful about the burgeoning excitement he feels, the small thrill of possibility that blooms like a budded flower from the nothing that is everything else he feels.

“So the town is just … ours, now? That’s it?” Isaac asks, practically skipping in place, his eyes as big as saucers.

“It’s not quite that simple,” Peter starts, but the room’s attention doesn’t waver from where it’s centered on Derek.

“This territory is technically recognized as mine,” Derek answers, “By the toughest kind of werewolves to convince, at least. It doesn’t mean we’ll never face a threat or come under attack again, but today re-asserted Hale claim over the land, claim that will last as long as any living member of my pack lives here.”

“And are we all … are _we_ your pack?” Danny asks, and all air goes out of the room, takes the breath from Derek’s lungs with it.

“You’re … every wolf besides Scott has submitted to me, and by acknowledging me as their alpha they’ve chosen to be pack. Scott doesn’t have to decide yet, because I haven’t forced him to submit and I won’t so long as he doesn’t want to. He’s protected by pack affiliation, if not technically part of it. But the rest of you are human. The rest of you …” Derek takes a deep breath and tries to think about how stupid it is to be nervous, how stupid this entire thing is, “You can have that same status Scott has, if you want it. Pack protection, pack recognition, but no place in the rank, no pressure to submit or to stay.”

It’s maybe the longest speech Derek has ever delivered to these kids, but they’re still blinking at him like they’re waiting for the punchline, like they need something else from him.

“I … I’m grateful for all your help so far,” he survives saying, miraculously, “And I owe each and every one of you, but I won’t ask you to make this your lives. There’s no time off from this, there’s no half in, half out. You would be in danger, your families would be in danger, and I can give you no guarantees on your survival or their safety.”

Silence. More silence. Maybe Derek is waiting for the punchline, too.

“Derek,” Lydia says slowly, “Do you think we all did what we just did because it’s summer and we’re bored? No offense, but I’m confident we could come up with more enjoyable pursuits of leisure, minus the high chance of blood loss too. We’re here because this is where our family is,” she pauses, glancing meaningfully from Jackson to Danny, from Allison to Scott, from Stiles back to Derek himself. “We’re already in.”

She says it like she’s trying to break bad news to him, and Derek knows that’s how it should feel, but it’s not. He’s terrified, sure. He’s gripped by the kind of fear he hasn’t experienced since he last had something to lose. But if the last couple of years have taught Derek anything, it’s that no matter how hard he tries to protect the things he loves, they’ll still be taken away in the end.

Derek has learned how to live with loss, but whatever this is that they’ve all been doing since summer began feels like the beginnings of something Derek could learn to live _for_.

He still can’t manage a more eloquent reaction to their declaration of loyalty than standing dumbfounded, blinking at them in total shock.

“Oh alpha, my alpha?” Danny breaks the silence, and Derek is grateful for the pillow fight that breaks out and the distraction it provides. Stiles starts it, groaning and calling Danny out for his love of cliches and no-one is surprised when the fight ends with Stiles sitting on the back of the couch, his feet keeping Danny’s chest pinned to the cushions with a strength that they probably should find surprising.

Derek gives Stiles the high five he comes looking for, and finds ways to touch each of them in some small way as they jostle to claim space and settle in for another movie night.

They watch ‘Teen Wolf’ this time, because Scott has the worst taste in everything and when midnight rolls around everyone who leaves does so smelling like pack. Feeling like it, too.

 

____

 

The night they collectively pledge their allegiance is the first night Derek notices that Stiles’ buzzcut is growing out.

He has already high-fived him, so there’s no real need for Derek to touch him again, but he can and so he does.

Stiles hair is long enough to push his fingers into, but not long enough to get a solid grip of, yet.

Derek doesn’t know why that’s how he catalogs the change.

 

____

 

There are no beach breaks or days off to be taken once the town is theirs and they are Derek’s.

Allison produces an entire series of tactical exercises for them to work through, and she might be excited about it, but she’s maybe the only one.

“I don’t need to be able to scale fifteen foot walls, Allison. I’m in a wolf pack, I’m not joining the marines,” is Lydia’s response.

Cora seems ready to take Allison’s side, because she’s always been huge on fitness and Derek shares her interest in what Allison has planned, but,

“When are we ever going to need to know how to crawl on our bellies for two hundred yards. It’s summer, we’re supposed to be having fun,” Isaac says, to murmured agreement from Scott and much louder agreement from Erica.

Derek would step in and say this is something they have to do, if it wasn’t too soon for him to be giving orders. He lets Allison handle it.

“It’s not about the specific tasks, it’s about being prepared. It’s about getting used to any kind of scenario we might find ourselves in, and being ready and able to get out of them. I’ve added weapons training and hand to hand combat slots too, it’s not all outdoor training and assault courses, but we’re going to have to get used to all of these environments, all of these areas. We can’t sit around in puppy piles for the rest of our lives, we’re going to have to fight.” Derek wonders how much of this is about Allison, rather than the pack. Or Allison’s need to have the pack be the kind of family she isn’t betrayed by, one that does what it does well _and_ for the right reasons, for good.

“We can ease into it,” Derek suggests, coming over to leaf through the plans Allison is holding defensively to her chest, “We don’t have to do any thirty mile hikes today. And we all work out most days anyway, don’t even try to lie to me Lydia,” he preempts, shooting her a look that he then transfers pointedly to her calf muscles.

And so gradually they work Allison’s tactical exercises into the other kinds of training they do. It’s not anything like a werewolf summer camp, so Peter can shut the fuck up, but they stick pretty closely to a schedule that sees Derek, Cora, Allison, Boyd, Danny and Jackson work out together in the gym Derek has set up on the top floor, sometimes joined by Scott. Lydia and Stiles make themselves scarce in the morning when this happens, but after a couple weeks Derek gets his first real glimpse at the research they continue to compile, and realizes they’re definitely not slacking. Afternoons start with brief werewolf sparring sessions and segue into different types of training that require full group participation. Sometimes Allison will set up grueling assault courses for them, but sometimes they play tactical games through the woods. They spend a couple of afternoons humoring Lydia’s attempts to make them all practice yoga, but after two sessions that becomes a staple of their schedule and maybe the one they look forward to most. The werewolves are greatly helped by the breathing exercises, and Derek is amazed to find that he can recreate that same feeling of mindless safety in the cage of his body through a workout that rarely sees him break a sweat.

Stiles is particularly flexible, and no-one comments on this. Isaac tries, but Derek gives him a look so flat it could crush him, and that’s the last that’s said of that.

Weekends are divided between larger scale outings - paintball or quad biking when the choice is Allison’s, Boyd’s or Cora’s, gaming nights when it’s Scott or Isaac’s turn to choose, some kind of extreme sports when Danny or Jackson get to pick, a family meal when Peter gets a single turn to choose that summer, movie nights when Derek or Stiles get a say, and disastrous nights out at loud, tacky clubs when Lydia or Erica’s turns to choose come around.

No matter what they’re doing, everyone knows where everyone else is at all times, and Derek knows it’s only ever a matter of hours until whoever isn’t there shows up.

Derek doesn’t form instant or easy lasting, personal bonds to each and every one of them, but he’s got time to get to know them, and he comes to depend on the comfort that knowing they’re _there_ brings him.

 

____

 

Stiles shows up everywhere he’s expected to be, and Derek knows for a fact that he’s working hard on the bestiary, working day in and day out to make sure they’re as prepared as they can be for whatever they will inevitably face next.

But Derek also knows that the hours Stiles devote to that don’t fully account for the dark circles under his eyes or the way he struggles to sit still on a yoga mat but can and does beat all the humans and even a werewolf or two to the end of Allison’s assault courses. He’s _ruthless_ at paintball, nailing his own best friend in the back in two separate rounds of the game, and Derek comes to wonder about that friendship, about all of Stiles’ friendships.

Scott is still working at Deaton’s, and Stiles is still working on the magic thing, but out of everyone in the pack, Stiles is the one with the most hours unaccounted for at the end of every week.

Stiles’ bruises have healed, but he’s still beaten up.

He’s bigger now, and meaner. He’s growing into his body in ways that suggest more than natural biological maturation, but he doesn’t show up to the pack’s morning work out once. He’s near cruel in the things he says to Scott, now, almost kinder to Jackson when that amounts to them teaming up to tear Peter a verbal new one every time he dares to open his mouth around them.

Stiles is there, but in a development that none of them would have wagered on, Stiles is the last hold out.

He’s there for the headcount, but his thoughts and his heart always seem to be somewhere else.

 

____

 

Jackson and Lydia are stronger than ever, it would seem. Derek isn’t surprised, because there’s only really one way a relationship can go after the love it entails literally saves someone’s life. Derek doesn’t envy them what they have. He doesn’t wonder if it’s contributing to everything Stiles is missing all of a sudden, either.

From the way Scott and Stiles talk about the relationship and how it started out, how it was before, Derek thinks a lot must have changed in the short time since Jackson’s bite took thanks to Lydia.

To hear it told, Derek expected Lydia to walk into the middle of his pack dragging Jackson behind her in a collar, but in reality it’s Peter that she keeps on a short leash. Jackson and Lydia are the kind of power couple that would be unbeatable if Lydia took the bite too. Maybe it’s more impressive given that she hasn’t and probably never can, wouldn’t want to if she could. They respect one another fiercely, and Derek knows without a doubt that if any harm came to either of them, the culprit would be torn limb from limb whether by claws or manicured fingernails.

Theirs is the kind of love straight from lore.

Derek knows that on a single word from Lydia, Jackson would eat Peter’s heart right out of his body for what he did to her. Derek suspects Stiles would be on hand to pass Jackson a napkin afterwards. But Lydia clearly has other ideas. She keeps Peter close determinedly, insistently, and she isn’t kind to him or trusting of him - Derek’s sure she’s the most suspicious of his uncle, and that’s one of his many titles that he’s happy to see gone - but she does treat him with a certain strange kind of familiarity. It’s like she decided to turn his treachery on him, and she acknowledges what he did as easily as she acknowledges the time of day. Lydia treats Peter like she is entitled to his knowledge, entitled to his time. She acts as though she has earned the right to make any use of Peter Hale that she can find for him, and the strangest thing about it all is that Peter acquiesces.

Derek doesn’t know if he’ll ever trust his uncle again, but he is pleasantly surprised to find that for the moment, he doesn’t have to worry.

Lydia loves Jackson in a way that Derek has never experienced and will never know, and it’s the ethereal, full absolution of that that makes Lydia easiest to trust. Not easy to trust, but easier than the others that come along as package deals for the wolves that have sworn loyalty to Derek, the wolves he’d lay his life down for in return.

The kind of loyalty Lydia has to Jackson is somehow greater still than the kind of loyalty Jackson is learning to give in to, the ties that pack binds from heart to heart, with every breath.

There are very few things in this life and world that Derek Hale can trust, but his feeling that Lydia won’t ever do anything to hurt Jackson, won’t ever do anything but her best for the pack that is his family now and the first that ever chose him back is among those few and scarce assurances.

 

____

 

The way Jackson and Stiles treat Peter is almost enough to constitute an earned label of ‘bullying.’

The things they say to him are hardly personal, or particularly cutting, because no-one besides Derek and Cora and Lydia know all that much about Peter’s history before the fire, and none of them are talking.

But Stiles refutes every input Peter tries to contribute and tacks on a barbed jibe about how Peter is a murderer, a traitor, the worst kind of monster because he did the unthinkable - he killed his own flesh and blood for power and status, for personal gain.

Jackson’s contributions are mostly hard looks, sharply pleased grins and dark, wicked laughter that gives the sails of Stiles’ claims the wind they need, because it’s so strange to see the two of them team up so enthusiastically, so near-joyously, that everyone is forced to pay attention.

And no-one can disagree with the things that Stiles says, because everything he says is true.

Peter is a murderer, and a traitor and he killed Derek’s sister and tried to kill Derek himself. He has hurt Derek’s pack directly, and by taking from Derek so much of what he needs to lead.

And so Derek doesn’t step in, and doesn’t do a thing to try and keep Stiles and Jackson in line.

When Peter has proven he has changed, has shown them that he’s sorry, then he’ll have earned their silence himself.

 

____

 

Derek finds he has no choice but to step in when it gets out of control and Stiles’ anger hurts him instead of Peter.

Maybe Peter has gotten used to it, or maybe it never bothered him at all to hear the terrible things he has done listed for anyone who cares to listen to hear and comment on.

But one afternoon he fails to react in a way that satisfies Stiles, and before Derek can react to the hitch in Stiles’ breathing, the way his heartbeat comes like a wave, thundering through him in swells of anger that get bigger and bigger and bigger until Derek worries his heart will burst, Stiles has slammed his fist into the thick wooden partition that separates the kitchen from the open living room.

Derek moves to him automatically, barking at Peter to get the hell out for reasons that completely escape him, because Peter didn’t do anything wrong today, it doesn’t make sense for Derek’s anger to focus on him. But Stiles makes a sound that’s somewhere between a snarl and a whimper and cradles his hand to chest right over his still hammering heart, and Derek can smell his blood in the air, and Derek’s vision goes red for a second, the wolf in him tenses, ready and eager to fight.

It takes considerable effort, but Derek finds his control, and fights to keep it when Stiles turns into the hand Derek puts on his shoulder, uses it as an excuse to duck in under Derek’s arm and stand so close to him that Derek could count his eyelashes, holding his hurt hand between them and looking at Derek with wide eyes like Derek’s supposed to fix it.

But when he speaks, he doesn’t acknowledge his pain.

“He killed your sister,” Stiles says in a rough, wet whisper, his voice caught between the salt Derek can smell with his face this close, and the rage Derek can feel vibrating through his body, barely grounded.

“He killed _Laura_ ,” Stiles says. Like he loved her. Like he lost her. Like he wasn’t the one to dig her body up out of the ground and make Derek bury her all over again.

“I know that,” Derek says, and this is when he should be angry, this is a moment when his control should slip. But it doesn’t.

“I know that, but I can’t think about it.” Derek has no idea why he’s explaining himself, and why he’s doing so to Stiles of all people. “If Laura hadn’t died, none of us would be here, not like this. Peter killed her, and Peter tried to kill me, and Peter lost his entire family because of Allison’s aunt, and because of me. Everything could be different, and maybe it should be, maybe it would be better that way, but this is what we _have_ , Stiles. We have whoever is left, and that shouldn’t be enough because it was never supposed to be enough, but it’s all there is. I can’t keep fighting this. We can’t live in the past. We can’t let what happened be all we’ll ever be. I’m sick of losing what I’ve lost over and over again, every single day. Aren’t you?”

Stiles looks at Derek like he just offered him the bite. He looks at Derek like he doesn’t know him. He doesn’t, not really, because none of them do, but Derek has always thought that if anyone was going to understand, given the chance, it would be Stiles. The sheriff’s kid who lost what Derek lost in a way that none of the others have - years ago; an ancient, tired kind of agony - someone so hell bent on making a difference that he lets that effort hurt him, doesn’t shy away from the pain of doing what’s right.

But Stiles reacts to Derek’s first ever attempt to honestly talk about what he’s been through and how he copes by looking at him in something akin to horror.

Derek recoils. He steps away from Stiles and it’s only when he does that he realizes he’d been holding Stiles’ hand as he spoke, his palm covering Stiles’ split knuckles, his fingers curled tight over the back of Stiles’ hand. Derek’s palm tingles, warm, and he looks down at it expecting to see someone else’s blood there, nothing he hasn’t seen before.

But instead there is nothing.

Stiles’ knuckles are healed.

He stretches his hand, splays it out wide, and then reduces it to a fist, looking from his own hand to Derek’s, then up into Derek’s eyes.

“You healed me,” he says, and it’s soft - wonder rather than accusation.

“I … I --” Derek doesn’t know what he’s looking at, he doesn’t know what he’s _done_.

“Did you know you could do that? Have you done that before?”

“No. No I’ve … I’ve never tried. I didn’t try now.”

“Holy shit. Okay. Okay,” Stiles says, pushing his hands through his hair, his eyes wild, his body jittery with the kind of energy Derek hasn’t seen in it in weeks. “I have to go talk to Lydia about this, maybe Peter. We have to look into this, this is -” he pauses, “It’s okay if I talk to Peter about it, right? You don’t … you don’t mind if I tell people?” Stiles asks, like this is something secret or private, something Derek might need to keep between them.

“I don’t mind, but it’s … we don’t know what this is. It’s probably … it’s probably just a good thing, right? It’s not a big deal.”

Stiles is back to looking at Derek like he’s crazy, but he reins it in when Derek doesn’t say any more.

“Okay, I’ll … I won’t make it a big deal, but for the record I think it is. I think this is huge. I have no idea what the hell you just did or why it happened or how, but you’re a born wolf and we just found an ability that you never knew was possible, dude. That’s … thank you,” he finishes, quieter, and Derek still doesn’t know what to say.

“You … you’re welcome,” he manages, and is satisfied when Stiles smiles.

Derek goes back to the groceries he’d been putting away before Stiles and Peter wandered in dragging their argument, and Stiles zips around the loft making all kinds of noise as he gathers his stuff and wrestles himself into his hoodie.

He comes back to find Derek before he leaves.

“I’m going to think about the other stuff you said,” Stiles tells him, his hands pinned down under the straps of his backpack, “But you should know … someone needs to -- what happened with Kate Argent wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault that you and Peter and Cora and Laura lost everyone else you love. None of this is on you. No-one thinks that, Derek.”

Derek doesn’t turn around from where he’s stacking tins of tomatoes onto a shelf, but Stiles waits, and Derek pulls it together enough to give him something like a nod, his head bowed between the shrug of his shoulders.

When Stiles finally leaves, he does so quietly, and the loft echoes in his wake; empty and too big for the loss of much more than just the noise he makes.

 

____

 

Isaac is the easiest and most difficult to get along with.

He doesn’t need or want much from Derek, other than the roof over his head and the constant comfort of company that Derek is happy to provide.

But all of the kids Derek chose were robbed of something long before he found them, and whether they know it or not, there are things they learn to need all over again when the blanks are filled in and they find, as werewolves, some kind of security they never had as humans.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have a hard time accepting what they need or what they’re given, and Derek himself is hardly best versed in what seventeen and eighteen year old kids can expect from their family.

Derek feels paternal towards Isaac in a way that extends beyond the bonds of pack, because he doesn’t feel that way about Erica or Boyd. He doesn’t act like Isaac’s father, and he doesn’t want that to be the relationship that they have, but he wants Isaac to know that there’s someone in his life he can trust to take care of him. Someone he can trust not to hurt him, at the very least.

The nature of pack hierarchy makes that very difficult, though. If Derek is seen to coddle Isaac, that will project a sense of weakness that he doesn’t want Isaac to have to deal with ever again. He gave Isaac the bite because he wanted Isaac to know what it feels like to be able to protect yourself, to be not just strong, but stronger. With that power comes more threats, more conflict and Derek hadn’t thought that part through, but the added bonus of the good kind of family sweetens the deal, Derek hopes.

When push comes to shove, however, it’s really not as simple as wanting Isaac to have what he deserves, and hoping in his own strange, dark way that nothing will show up to stop Derek from giving him what he can.

Isaac has a home, whenever and wherever Derek has one. Before the loft that was their subway cars, and eventually it will be the Hale house that Peter’s money and Jackson’s parent’s contacts are rebuilding, although Derek has no idea of the time frame on that, or any of the details at all. He doesn’t ask, and Isaac doesn’t either because Isaac has learned to take for granted that wherever Derek goes, Isaac is welcome to follow. Derek doesn’t know how that happened, or what he did to make that truth stick, but he’s proud that it has.

Isaac has whatever he needs in terms of food and clothes and books for school and comic books and video games, he even has an allowance for the times when he and Scott want to disappear for a while, out past town into the darkness that surrounds it. Derek has more money than he’ll ever need, but it’s easier to spend it on Isaac than it is to spend it on himself.

It’s easier to give Isaac what he wants than it is to figure out and provide the many, many things he needs. That’s harder on both of them.

For example:

“You can’t stay out all night and not tell me. You shouldn’t be out all night on a school night anyway, Isaac.”

Isaac rolls his eyes and Derek doesn’t strangle him with his scarf.

“So I can stay out all night and almost get myself killed when it’s for you and your pack, but I have to check in if I want to pass out at Scott’s? That makes sense. You’re not my father, Derek. You’re twenty four, you’re barely an adult yourself.”

“ _Our_ pack, Isaac,” Derek says, more exhausted by this conversation every time they have to have it.

“What if I don’t want it to be? What if I don’t want this anymore? What if I don’t want _you_ anymore? Scott could be my alpha. He’d be a better alpha than you.”

When Derek’s eyes flash and his claws snick out from underneath his fingers he stays perfectly still. It’s an instinctual reaction to what Isaac is saying, but Derek doesn’t let himself believe him.

“Does that make you angry, Derek? What are you going to do, hit me?”

Derek wills his claws away and closes his eyes until he can open them as a colour that isn’t red.

“I’m not your father, Isaac,” he says, careful and solemn, and implicit is the promise he can’t say any better than that.

Isaac doesn’t answer him then, doesn’t even acknowledge that he’s heard Derek until the next day.

“I know, I’m sorry,” he says then, apropos of nothing at all, stopping to check in with Derek before he leaves the loft to head over to the high school where Scott and Danny and Jackson are running an informal Lacrosse practice. “I’ll text you if I’m going to be late for dinner, but I’ll try not to be.”

Derek lits a stiff hand to ruffle Isaac’s curls, and then he wraps one arm around his shoulders and hugs him, because Derek will never be anything like Isaac’s dad, and it’s important that Isaac knows he can trust in that.

 

____

 

One morning after a ‘pack meeting’ that wasn’t so much a meeting at all so much as it was an excuse for everyone to take up residence in Derek’s loft and spend the evening laying around in his space, reading and watching tv and eating his food and sparring with Jackson, in Cora’s case, playing video games in Scott and Stiles’ case, Derek comes downstairs to find Stiles’ jeep still in the parking lot, Stiles asleep in the passenger seat.

He raps on the window sharply, more concerned for Stiles’ general well being than for the sleep he so clearly needs, which speaks loudly to the magnitude of Derek’s alarm at finding Stiles sleeping in his car outside Derek’s building.

Stiles blinks awake slowly, sleepy, and he stretches languidly before he opens the door and tumbles out on to the asphalt.

“What’s up?”

“What’s up? ‘What’s up’? You’re sleeping in your car, Stiles. You didn’t go home last night. What the hell do you think you’re doing? What the hell is going on?”

Stiles leans back against the side of the jeep, his feet crossed at the ankles and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He shrugs, squinting up into the early morning sunlight, and Derek wants to get his hands on him so badly it makes his fangs tingle in his gums. He wants to fist his hands in Stiles stupid flannel shirt and shake him, he wants to tangle his fingers in Stiles’ hair and _tug_. Derek hates that he notices he could, now. He hates that Stiles is so guarded, so absent even when he’s standing in front of him that it makes Derek want to shake whatever is wrong right out of him. He hates that that seems like the only way he’d get any kind of real, useful truth out of Stiles.

“It’s not a big deal, Derek. I didn’t want to go home last night. Things with my dad are … I have to lie to him every single day. He knows I’m lying, and he knows that I know that he knows, but we still go through the motions, we still act like nothing has changed, and it … it gets tiring. It’s easier when he’s not home, but he was on day shift yesterday, I didn’t want to go home and lie some more.”

Not everyone in Derek’s pack has lost some or all of their family, but Stiles is the only one who still has any kind of close relationship to his parent, so it’s easy for Derek to forget. Not because Derek ever discounts Stiles, but because he knows there’s nothing he can do to make what Stiles is going through any easier, not without making things more dangerous for his father.

“Next time you sleep upstairs. Tell the sheriff you’re sleeping at Scott’s or something, or ask if you can stay here if you think he’ll let you. Spin it as a sleepover with Isaac. You can stay here anytime you want, but not in your car, Stiles.”

It’s gruff rather than kind, because Derek is still trying to remember how to not shield what he means and what he says with the words he has to use.

Stiles looks at Derek in surprise, and touches him with the hand that Derek somehow healed. Derek doesn’t see it coming because he’s caught up in the change in Stiles’ heartbeat - the way it’s gone sluggish and slow, thumping full with whatever he’s feeling. It startles him when Stiles’ knuckles brush against the bare skin of his forearm, and he’s still wondering why the small touch hits him so hard as Stiles murmurs a quick “Thanks,” and climbs back into his jeep and drives away, waving back at Derek over his shoulder as he goes.

 

____

 

Scott and Derek still disagree on a lot of things, but for the time being they can agree that pack is what’s important, so there is little to no conflict between them while they all stumble through what it takes to make it work.

Neither Scott nor Derek are done learning, although they’ve both got vastly different fields of study to focus on.

While Derek is learning how to deal with change, how to be what the people who depend on him need, how to be okay with having people depend on him at all, and more difficult still - learning to depend on them in return, Scott is working to better himself, because he’s already clearly at ease with personal relationships, it’s his concept of trust that needs work, rather than his experience with exercising it.

Something about this as a period of transition for them both creates a sort of mutual recognition between them that eases the tension that stretched before it. Derek respects Scott as someone who is technically an alpha in his own right, and Scott respects Derek as the truest kind of alpha for miles and miles around. They’ve found their places, and with that comfort comes something like a professional kind of friendship that becomes more and more like regular friendship every day.

The conflict between Scott and Derek was always one central to the sense of division within the larger group, and at the rate they’re tearing it down it will be nothing but a regrettable memory in no time at all.

Boundaries in Derek’s pack are falling hard and fast, and everyone is the better for that.

 

____

 

That summer they don’t have to lock themselves up during full moons to keep the town safe.

Allison and her father set up a boundary deep in the woods that gives the pack several miles to run freely through, but keeps them inside with the kinds of equipment that Derek always associated with the worst kind of containment.

It’s different now. It’s helping.

The pack and Chris Argent develop a simple kind of contract. He’ll keep the hunters away from his daughter’s wolves if the wolves keep his daughter and this town safe from everything that wishes to do them harm.

Derek isn’t sure how facilitating pack runs when the moon is full factors into that, and he’s not sure that he trusts the gesture at first, but he goes into it knowing he can fight his way out of it if he must, knowing that the incentive to trusting someone for once might pay off, and that if he’s fooled again it won’t be any less than he’s used to and ready for.

Chris keeps his word and maintains the pack’s moon boundary, and the humans camp out at the loft on those night, keeping one another company through the dark, and sleeping off the next day in what Derek still refuses to acknowledge is a puppy pile.

 

____

 

Allison and Scott aren’t back together, and there’s a coolness to their interactions that gives Derek secondhand frostbite when he’s around to witness their conversations.

They’ve both been betrayed by Allison’s family, and Derek thinks that should be common ground for them, but Scott explains that there’s still a tangle of obligation that’s making everything messy for them.

“If I hadn’t been bitten, if we’d never been together, who knows what her life would be like, you know? Her mom would probably still be alive. Her crazy aunt and grandpa, too. She thinks I think she’d be like them, now, but I don’t. I think she uses that as an excuse to stay mad at me, because she’s mad at herself. She hates that she doesn’t know if she’d have realized how wrong what they were doing was, if being in love with me hadn’t divided her loyalties. She feels like she owes me, I think. And she doesn’t, but it’s too soon, man. We’ll be friends again, one day, but everything is too fresh, too freaking painful.”

Derek isn’t used to thinking about his feelings, or the feelings of others whether they’re people he still manages to care about or not. He does what’s right, and he acts on some combination of what he can do, what he deserves to give up, and whatever will get what needs to be done done.

“She loved you, though. Anyone could see that. That’s not the kind of thing that ever really goes away. Don’t you want her back?”

Scott pauses to push his hair out of his face, wipes the sweat off his chin with the bottom of his shirt before he squares up to Derek again, ready for his attack.

“We don’t have to be together to love each other,” he says, like it’s simple, and when Derek lunges for him Scott hooks his heel behind Derek’s, tries to trip him backwards to the mat and very nearly succeeds.

 

____

 

Lying by the lake one hot, lazy afternoon, Erica thanks Derek for the bite.

It’s more of a pond, really, but it’s shaded by trees on one side and a small cliff face on the other, so it’s cool and heavenly to sink into after marathon races through the woods.

Stiles and Lydia are on Boyd and Cora’s shoulders in the water, trying not all that hard to knock one another over, and Scott and Isaac are taking turns to belly flop off the top of the cliff into the lake, wading out and shaking off to compare the stinging marks the water leaves before they heal.

Erica flops down next to where Derek is drying off in the sun.

“I never thought I’d get to live like this, you know,” she says, leaning up on her elbows beside him but watching the rest of the pack, not looking at Derek. “With my epilepsy I never knew what was going to be too far or too much, and now nothing is. It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t make it easy on you, either, but you saved my life. You gave me back my life. You know that, right?”

Derek wants to make a lighthearted comment about how the sun has gone to her head, how pack mentality has made her soft, but he knows she’s always been soft in all the ways that matter. He hopes she always will be.

“You joined my pack,” he tells her in return, “You gave me back my life, too.”

 

____

 

Whatever is still keeping Scott and Stiles at arm’s length seems to sometimes be about Isaac, sometimes so much more.

Stiles bristles when Scott and Isaac get too close, but it’s a tiny thing, a freeze in his posture that he starts to recover from quicker and quicker as Derek watches, like it still stings to see his best friend act like he has a brand new best friend right in front of the old one. But it doesn’t seem to Derek like Stiles is fighting for the friendship. He doesn’t act like he’s entitled to Scott’s space, like he ever was or ever intends to be again. He keeps his distance just as much as Scott starts to shift closer to Isaac, and Derek knows Stiles could put a stop to that if he really wanted to. He could kick up a fuss, at least.

The man hours Stiles can afford to give the pack get scarcer, still, but Derek knows that Deaton has ramped up their training.

Stiles shows up sometimes gleaming with magic. Derek can’t explain it, because he can’t see it, not really, and he knows he couldn’t feel it if he tried to touch it. But Stiles is brighter in a way that seems sharp, stands straighter these days like the weight he’s been carrying on his shoulders has slithered right into his bloodstream instead, become a kind of purpose that flows through him, swims in his very veins.

Even when Stiles is here, he’s different. He’s different to how he’d been at the beginning of the summer, and he’s different again to how he’d been before that.

More and more, Derek finds himself watching Stiles hungrily, tracking the way his body moves in new ways, how the things he says sound different to how they used to - the words the same but the intent behind them changed, Stiles’ awareness of who he is and what he can be altered.

Derek finds in himself a near desperate need to know Stiles, in whatever shape he takes, for however long that lasts, and he has no idea how long it has been there, how long it has taken him to recognize it for what it is. Derek hasn’t fooled himself into believing that he’ll get to keep Stiles, because of all of them Stiles has the most to find in the world beyond this. Stiles’ life doesn’t have to be defined by the supernatural, and he’s good at what he does for them only because he’s good at everything he turns his hand to. Derek knows that Stiles can and inevitably will built a rich, fulfilling life for himself outside of their world, one that none of them will have a place in.

Derek just wants to know Stiles at one point, for some significant stretch of time, before he goes and doesn’t come back.

He needs something to help him remember that Stiles was here.

It’s a need Derek didn’t see coming, and one he doesn’t understand. Even when he’s looking at Stiles, at the long, lean lines and the sharp, honed edges of him, the now-soft, newly wild hair that seems incongruent with how his mouth has turned down and his heart has gone hard, Derek can’t see what about him is special, what about him is different.

But Derek knows he is different, and not just different in himself, but different from everyone else around him, different in ways that extend beyond the classifications of werewolf and human, teenager and pseudo-adult.

Stiles is something else entirely, the other to every single kind of person you could compare him to.

And Derek has always known that.

It is only his need to know the truth of Stiles, the reality of _how_ he is, that is new.

 

____

 

Stiles’ bedroom barely smells like his own anymore.

Derek stops by sometimes to check in on him when he hasn’t been around for a day or two, and he never finds Stiles alone. He sits on the tile above Stiles’ bedroom and listens to the quiet breathing and steady heartbeats of Stiles and Lydia, Stiles and Lydia and Danny. He could hear their murmured conversation over the tapping of keyboards, the scrawl of pen on paper if he really wanted to, but he rarely does. He only needs to know they’re safe.

Sometimes Derek will show up in the middle of the night and catch glimpses of Stiles and Lydia passed out on Stiles’ bed, fully dressed and with their shoes still on, but curled up close and overlapping on top of the covers, keeping one another warm.

Jackson spends next to no time at the Stilinksi’s place, because he’s almost always at the loft or wherever the wolves are on any given day, but if Derek can pick up the way Stiles and Lydia’s scent mingle in that room, all over one another’s skin, then Jackson definitely notices. He doesn’t care, and Derek is proud of him for that. Maybe a little envious.

“She’s all about that book stuff, man. And Stilinski’s new magic tricks are wicked cool. He keeps her happy with all that research stuff, and I get to listen to her talk about it when they’ve had a breakthrough, when she already has the answers and isn’t looking to me for help or answers. It’s the best set up ever. I never thought I’d see the day, but Stiles Stilinski is freaking great for my relationship.”

“And you don’t worry about …” Derek doesn’t even know how to finish that sentence. He can’t believe he began it. When did his life become one of Laura’s Sweet Valley High books, exactly?

Jackson laughs until he’s curled up around the sound, his eyes closed and his face split open with mirth. It makes Derek smile to see him so happy, so loose, and comfortable enough to be this way around Derek.

“Dude,” Jackson starts, still out of breath, “Please. It’s really not like that, not for either of them. Lydia has like a book nerd boner for his smarts or whatever, and who doesn’t. But Stiles never wanted her, not really. Not the way I do. She’s been like his hero, for years. He just needed to matter to her, you know? Feel like she saw him. They’re a killer team, man. I know we’re all super strength and great stealth abilities and whatnot, but those two and Danny are definitely the brains of this whole thing. What they do has to set you apart from every other pack.”

And it does. It really does. Other packs might have emissaries, their own versions of Deaton, alliances with other types of supernatural creatures that give them strength through cooperation, political power, but Derek’s research team are something else entirely. Derek’s humans take pride in their humanity, and that’s a strength that every pack who doesn’t have them must be hurting for. The human emissaries Derek has met have all been so hell bent on forgoing their humanity, proud of how they’d sacrifice it in a second for their pack, to _be_ pack, and it’s always been their downfall, in the end. Stiles and Danny are ruthlessly, unapologetically human, and they run with wolves, they love their wolves, they love Lydia for whatever she might be. They dabble in magic, they run the same drills as werewolves, they’ve laid their lives down to save their friends whether they must do so in the face of hunters or wolves or anything else the world throws at them. They do whatever it takes, and they do it not for power or the promise of the bite, but because they want to.

“They’re definitely something special. We’re lucky to have them.”

 

____

 

The next time Derek sees Lydia - which is less than an hour after he decides he should talk to her - he asks her how their research is going.

“Good,” she says, definitive, “We’re still up to our necks in translations and a lot of the lore we’re compiling will be hit or miss in theory, but we’re establishing a significant body of material. It will build as we go on, of course, and we’ll come to find out the hard way that some things aren’t as accurate as we’d like, but we’re making a lot of progress in a very short space of time.” She pauses, mouth pursed. “Why? Was there something in particular you needed?”

“Oh, no,” Derek says, surprised that she’d think he’d only ask if he was after something, vowing to check in more regularly in future, even if only to say ‘thanks’, “It’s just I was thinking. If you’re getting so much done and spending so much time on this, Stiles’ place must be getting pretty short on space. If you want to, you’re welcome to set up shop here instead. We’re only using half of the top floor as a workout space, so there’s plenty of room.”

Lydia looks at him for a moment, not saying a thing, and when she grins, it’s wicked.

“Well thank you, Derek. I’ll run that by Stiles and Danny. That’s thoughtful of you, I appreciate it.”

“I uh. I appreciate everything you guys do. You know you don’t have to push yourselves, right?”

“We make time for everything that needs to get done, Derek. Sometimes we’re studying, sometimes we’re goofing off and working on our own secret codes. Sometimes we even find time to gossip about boys. So don’t you worry, we’re all doing just fine. Thanks for checking in,” she says, touching him lightly in the arm, and Derek resists the urge to pull her into a hug.

 

____

 

She winds up in his arms that weekend, anyway.

It’s Erica’s turn to pick what the pack does that Saturday, and that’s how Derek finds himself with a loft full of teenage boys looking about as lost as Derek feels.

“I hope you don’t think … you know I have no idea what you’re supposed to wear or whatever, right? You can borrow my clothes, I guess, but that’s as far as I go.”

Jackson snorts, and Isaac looks at Derek with wide eyes, his voice deadpan when he says, “That’s generous of you, but I’m pretty sure if we all show up at a club wearing matching wifebeaters we’ll garner some unflattering comments about boy bands.”

And so with Derek’s duties as the second eldest and least fashionable member of his pack completed, they split off to spend the afternoon and early evening sparring and play wrestling, eating Derek out of house and home and speculating increasingly hysterically on what exactly is happening in Lydia Martin’s bedroom right now.

Cora being over at Lydia’s house probably feels stranger to Derek than the fact that Stiles is there too. Derek’s younger sister is about as invested in her appearance as Derek is in his. Laura, on the other hand, would have had a field day with dressing Erica, Allison, Stiles, and Cora too. Lydia frequently voices her desire to get her hands on their wardrobes, and while Allison, Stiles and Cora tend to scowl at this in unison, Erica’s eyes light up with something like enthusiastic longing. It’s Erica’s weekend, and Derek is not even a little bit surprised that this is how it’s going down.

He is _maybe_ bewildered by the fact that they’re going to Jungle again, until Scott lays it out for him.

“Well Jackson and Lydia are in a relationship, so are Erica and Boyd, and Stiles says the rest of us all are too fucked up still to be dating. Except for Danny, and since he’s gay we’re going to a gay club. What’s not to get?”

Derek mulls all of that over.

“Stiles thinks I’m too fucked up to be dating?”

“No, Stiles thinks we need to carefully vet anyone you have a remote interest in before you’re allowed to date her, that’s all. You get special consideration. The rest of us are too fucked up to date.”

It takes Derek a little longer to mull that over.

“Or him,” he adds, only mostly faintly.

“Huh?” Scott asks, head tilted to one side in that way that makes him look like an inquisitive puppy, all dog jokes aside - where they firmly belong, in Derek’s pack.

“You said Stiles says the pack have to vet anyone I want to date as soon as I express an interest in her. And I added ‘or him’.”

“Oh,” Scott says, and then tilts his head the other way. “Cool. Or him.”

And maybe it’s because of the ease of that conversation that Derek feels suddenly lighter about the prospect of a pack night out on the town. Maybe that’s where he goes wrong.

 

____

 

Derek’s pack are definitely the best dressed bunch there that night, and isn’t that a new kind of pride to learn the feeling of.

Lydia and Allison don’t look all that different to how they usually look, to Derek, but Cora has made an effort and Erica is wearing Lydia’s clothes, which Derek would be able to tell even if he couldn’t smell Lydia all over them. She looks softer, somehow, her make-up less dramatic, but what really makes the difference is the look on her face - a warm, youthful kind of happiness. A grateful sort of satisfaction. It’s seeing his pack shift through and collect so many new kinds of joy that makes Derek think their weekends are often their biggest success.

Stiles shows up wearing jeans that seem obscenely tight even to Derek, who is known for preferring a snug fit. Lydia has bullied him into an equally tight light grey henley, and his hair is the longest Derek has ever seen it, still by no means so long that it’s messy or too much, the right length to wear the kind of style someone has smoothed it into - a messy kind of quiff that looks perfectly tugged out of place - just right. When he walks in, catches sight of Derek by the bar and grins and waves, Derek turns away, takes a huge gulp of his drink, and starts re-evaluating.

 

____

 

Regular alcohol has zero effect on a werewolf thanks to their metabolism, and this is a fact that Derek has generally found himself to be thankful for. Tonight he’s not so sure.

The humans aren’t wasted, because some of Derek’s new responsibilities are no brainers, but he figured that in the grand scheme of dangers his pack has faced and will face, letting a bunch of seventeen and eighteen year olds have a few drinks when they have their alpha and seven other werewolves to look out for them is hardly likely to end in bloodshed. Maybe tears, because the law of averages suggests that there’s at least one weepy drunk in the bunch, but they’ll deal.

Or so Derek manages to console himself reasonably when Stiles _isn’t_ draped all over him, or worse - draped all over someone else.

Stiles has friends here. A gaggle of drag queens who all but flock to him when he arrives, and refuse to let him out of their sight or reach all night. Stiles spends his time in the club dancing in their midst only to break away for a moment to come and bother Derek, or pester Danny to get him another drink because Derek’s real ID and Danny’s fake are keeping everyone merry. Danny gets Stiles whatever he asks for, even when that’s an increasingly ludicrous and elaborate string of colorful cocktails, and he smiles at him all the while, touching Stiles’ face and messing with his hair and putting his hands on Stiles’ arm, Stiles’ hip, like that’s a thing that he can do. The fact that it is a thing that Danny can do makes Derek wish he could get wasted.

“So. Dudes, huh?” Danny asks, when Stiles has been dragged back to the dance floor in a whirl of feathers and glitter.

Derek shrugs.

“Yeah. You get it,” he says.

“Sure, but it’s kind of a revelation that you do, Derek. Is that … do you need to talk about it?”

And Derek has to laugh at that.

“I appreciate the offer, Danny, but I’m good. Sexuality isn’t so rigid a concept for werewolves. Not born werewolves, at least.”

Danny nods easily, because Danny is kind of the best.

“Cool.” These teens will never cease to amaze Derek, apparently. “I kind of have some questions about werewolf love stuff in general, would it be okay if we found some time to talk about that this week?”

“Of course. But why do you want to know? For research? Did something come up?”

“Yes and no,” Danny says, smiling brightly at Derek. “Now could you go stand somewhere else? I’m pretty attached to my title as the most attractive person who frequents this club, and you’re giving me a complex.”

“You’re a very attractive man, Danny,” Derek assures him sincerely, and gets a fond eye roll in return, but he does as he’s asked and goes to brood somewhere else.

On his way to do just that, he passes Scott and stops him with a hand on his forearm.

“Stiles … Stiles is too fucked up to date too, right? It’s just Danny that he decided can?”

Scott grins and shakes his head at something he finds funny.

“Don’t worry, Danny is the only one gets that pass, and he’ll be using it to break hearts, not the other way around.”

Derek isn’t worried, because Derek isn’t stupid. He knows Danny can look out for himself, and he knows Danny won’t hesitate to ask for help if he gets in over his head. He knows Danny knows that no matter what happens tonight or down the road, his pack is waiting back at home for him, always.

Derek feels better for Scott’s confirmation that the dating ban is practically pack-wide, anyway.

 

____

 

It’s really more a matter of Lydia’s shoes than how much she’s had to drink that sees her demand that Derek carries her to the diner once they leave Jungle.

It’s 3am and they’re all worse for wear, sweaty and exhausted from dancing in most cases and particularly in Cora’s. She’s dressed in a leather skirt and a black tank top, boots that kind of terrify Derek. She looks a lot like Laura, and he knows he doesn’t have to acknowledge this when he grins at her a little sadly and lets her hug him hello at the beginning of the night. Now she’s the one grinning, her arms slung around Jackson’s neck as he gives her a piggy back down the block.

Which apparently leaves Derek as Lydia’s second choice for capable arms to do her bidding.

“Up,” she pouts, poking Derek in the bicep, and all he can really do in response is bend down to scoop her up into a fireman’s lift. She’s adorable and Derek is so fond of her, has grown _fiercely_ fond of them all.

They pour into a couple of booths in the town’s only twenty four hour diner, and share a loud, messy meal in the middle of the night, as a pack.

Stiles is sitting half in Isaac’s lap, half in Scott’s, and when Jackson leans across the table to dab ketchup off the corner of his mouth with a napkin Stiles grins wide and bright and says “Thanks, mommy,” enthusiastically catching and making a show of carefully pocketing the kiss Jackson blows him in return. Erica and Boyd are going to war over the last order of fries in the corner, Allison, Lydia and Cora are gossiping like the teenage girls they are in another corner, and Danny and Lydia are quizzing Peter on something, taking notes on what he’s saying on napkins.

Maybe Derek’s night began in confusion, and continued in some kind of dawning horror, but it ends the way it should.

With family.

 

____

 

For the most part Erica is one of the guys, because she chooses to be just that.

She fights harder than any of them, dirtier and meaner, and she takes every blow they manage to land on her as challenge rather than defeat. Jackson and Erica are quickly becoming the pack’s best fighters, because they don’t let themselves get discouraged by a momentary loss the way Isaac does, or refuse to let it sink in enough to sting, like Boyd. They take it on board and let it make them angry in a way that they control and reshape, accept and _use_.

But Erica is very much one of the girls, too.

She takes to Cora like she’s her own long lost sister, and the women in Derek’s pack share a kind of closeness that reminds him a lot of the bond between his mother and his sisters, his older female cousins when he growing up. They all bicker like school children, Derek included sometimes, but the girls always take one another’s side, and Derek finds it charming to watch them gang up together on the boys, because they always, always win.

Derek’s is not a pack ruled by men, or by women. It’s not one in which age takes precedence or ability dictates authority. Everyone in Derek’s pack is an authority on something, and they all take turns to lead. There are no egos in this group, at least none that aren’t checked by the group as one and with ease, without malice. Whatever the mission dictates - whether it’s a mission to learn how to disarm an assailant, a mission to race to the top of a mountain, or a mission to pick up snacks for movie night - everyone has their strengths, and they learn as a group to find, acknowledge, and use these abilities to everyone’s advantage.

Delegation is not an easy thing for Derek to learn, and he knows he will struggle with it still when the time comes to put someone else in the path of danger, when it makes sense for someone other than him to take that risk.

But for now it’s not so tough, because all Derek has to do is be okay with letting Cora coach Jackson through a sparring session, or asking Danny to make playlists for roadtrips.

Derek is managing just fine. Derek is learning, with the help and patience of his pack.

 

____

 

One night as Derek is climbing into bed after an evening of racing Isaac through the woods, an exercise more to curb the restless twitch of their limbs than to train, his phone vibrates next to him, casting blue light up along the wall.

 _Stiles calling_.

“What’s wrong?”

“Uh, nothing? Nothing, right?”

“Everything’s fine here, but why are you calling me at midnight?”

“Danny and Lydia just left, I just needed to clear something with you, if that’s cool.”

Derek relaxes.

“Sure, shoot.”

“Well, the thing is. Deaton is taking a road trip this weekend. He’s heading out of town to meet some magical contacts of his. Just some catching up, a little magical artifact exchange, nothing dangerous. He said I could come along, in the interest of broadening the scope of my training, but I thought I should check in with you on it.”

Derek settles back into his pillows, fighting what seems to be an instinctual desire to tell Stiles no.

“You’re sure it’s not going to get dangerous?”

“I mean. Barring total unforeseen disaster, which … I know, I know, happens to us more than any of us would like. It should be totally fine.”

Derek knows how ‘should be’ goes. Derek has lived a lifetime of ‘should be’s in the last few years.

“I suppose you’re not going to let me send someone with you?”

Stiles is stubborn, and headstrong, and even if Derek wasn’t half in love with him, he’d admire those things. He’d still be driven mad by them, too.

“There’s really no need, Derek. It’s going to be me and Deaton geeking out over creepy old figurines and dusty books. I promise I’ll call the second things start to look fishy, but I’m pretty confident that’s not going to happen.”

Derek is pretty confident that Stiles wouldn’t have to call him if things started to go wrong. He’s pretty confident he could track Stiles’ heartbeat from a state over, at this point.

“Okay. When do you leave?”

“Late on Friday. I’ll be back on Tuesday. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

Derek doesn’t argue with that, but he could. Oh, how he could.

“Fine. I’m not thrilled about this, but I trust you not to do anything stupid.”

Stiles laughs, and Derek wants to know what that sound tastes like.

“Thanks. I … I’d never willingly walk into anything that’s going to make your life any harder than it has to be, you know that, right?”

“I know that, Stiles,” Derek assures him, and continues to try and assure himself long after Stiles has ended the call with a sleepy ‘goodnight’.

 

____

 

Boyd and Danny corner Derek when Stiles is gone, because Derek’s life might be turning itself around near-spectacularly, but his luck has always been shitty.

It’s Cora’s weekend to pick a group activity, but she chose a girls-only sleepover, so everyone else has the night off from pack stuff. Isaac is over at Scott’s place, Jackson is at some kind of high society dinner with his parents, and Peter is off doing who knows what, at no one cares where.

Derek’s plans for a quiet night in with the group collection of DVDs that’s slowly creeping further along his singular shelving unit when he isn’t looking is shot to hell when Boyd and Danny drop onto the couch on either side of him, heads turned toward him with twin looks of expectation.

“Did you need something?”

“Danny told me you said you’d talk him through some of the werewolf relationship stuff, and I knew this was a conversation I needed to be here for,” Boyd says, because he’s maybe the easiest to get along with, if not Derek’s favorite anymore, but he’s still an asshole.

Derek sighs, and tries valiantly to take solace in the fact that at least he doesn’t have a larger audience for this.

“Fine. Let’s do this.”

“Sweet,” Danny says, and produces a notebook that’s apparently full of questions, because he too is an asshole.

“Question One: ‘mates’ - is that a thing.”

Derek sighs harder.

“Technically not a thing. Not in the ‘one mate to rule your heart’ kind of way. But wolves have different ways of realizing and acknowledging their attraction, and there are going to be people you’re drawn to in a way that feels … inevitable, maybe.”

“And what exactly do you mean by that? Like what does that entail?”

Derek wants out of this conversation an hour before it started.

“You’re not going to die if you’re not with them, but you’d feel the loss keenly.”

“And if you are with them?”

“You’re more powerful in a lot of ways. You’re a fuller version of yourself. But finding someone who is right for you that way can be a weakness too, and it’s perceived that way by other packs, other wolves. If someone comes for you, they’re going to try and get there through your mate-like-person.”

“So when it’s two wolves …”

Boyd steps in, thank god for small mercies.

“You’re both stronger,” he says, shrugging, like this is easy for him. “It’s easier to figure out when you find one another, because you both feel it. It’s like … it’s like a bond that goes beyond just being in love. It’s a kind of larger commitment, I guess? You know that even when you fight, even when you hate each other for an hour or a day, that does nothing at all to change how you really feel about that person. I can’t imagine ever not having Erica by my side.”

Danny’s eyebrows lift.

“So it’s like super strength dating, too? You don’t ever break up when you find someone who you’re compatible with in that way?”

“It’s pretty rare,” Derek admits, even though he feels like this is territory he has to be careful with, something he doesn’t want to mislead any of them on, “It happens, but it’s unusual. If a wolf falls for a human there’s no guarantee that they’ll last any longer than a regular human relationship because the human isn’t tied to it the way the wolf is, there’s every chance he’ll fall in love with someone else and walk away. It’s rare in itself for wolves to fall for humans, though. For the most part it’s wolves and wolves. Sometimes wolves and some other kind of other. It’s difficult to share your life with someone who has never experienced it first hand, I guess.”

“Huh,” Danny says, frowning. “What about reproduction?”

Derek chokes on nothing.

“Uh … um. Do you mean like … the act or the result?”

To his credit, Danny blushes.

“I hate to even ask, but I feel like it’s best to get it out of the way. Stiles found something about … uh … like … knotting, I guess?”

Jesus. This conversation is quickly becoming the toughest trial Derek’s pack has ever faced. He clears his throat and tries to answer as quickly and as succinctly as he can.

“Sometimes. Alphas. Not every time, or with every person, though. Just when the level of attraction is unusually high.”

“Oh jesus,” Danny says, and Boyd looks _green_.

Derek moves on quickly.

“The baby side of things is pretty normal, though,” he tries to say brightly. “Female wolves tend to be slightly more fertile than human women, according to what I’ve been taught, but pregnancy is more or less the same. When two wolves reproduce it’s almost always a cub, when it’s a human and a wolf and the human is female, you’re looking at something along the lines of fifty-fifty odds, forty-sixty when it’s the other way around. Things can get weird when you mix in other species, but that’s enough for a basic outline, right?” Derek is tempted to hold his breath.

Maybe Danny should too, because now he looks green.

“And if it’s a male wolf and a male human …”

“Dudes don’t have wombs, Danny.”

“Oh thank god. I mean, I know that, but fuck. Knotting, man. Maybe I know nothing.”

“That’s as weird as it gets. You’re over the worst of it,” Derek promises, patting Danny’s shoulder soothingly and praying for this conversation to end.

“Yeah, I think that’s totally enough for today. Thanks, Derek. I think …”

Danny and Boyd wander off looking like they’ve just been hit by two by fours, and Derek, unfortunately, knows the feeling well. He knows from experience that this measures up pretty well.

 

____

 

Boyd and Allison are probably one of the unlikeliest pack duos, if you ask Derek.

Cora and Jackson were a surprise, but their bond makes sense when you think about it. They’re both bratty, mouthy teenagers who seem to take life itself as a challenge to their ability. They need to be the best at everything, every single time, and instead of that becoming some kind of competition between the two of them, it’s grown into a pretty solid bond instead. They egg each other on in a way that does them both good, and no-one is louder about their pride when one succeeds than the other.

Boyd and Allison, on the other hand, seem to find common ground in their solitude.

They spend hours and hours every week trekking through the woods together to set up Allison’s challenges and training traps. The first time they come back after a morning out together, Derek asks why Boyd is smiling, what he and Allison talked about.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” Boyd had said, grinning, and after a couple of weeks of observing the way they work together, Derek thinks he gets it.

Allison does everything with absolute effort. She turns competency into an art form. That in itself is something Boyd excels at too, something he can understand in a very personal way, but added to their mutual dedication to detail is the common ground of their general demeanor. They work side by side in silence, concentrating on their work and there to support one another, there for company, but not the way they work with anyone else. Boyd is pretty zen, but anything more than an hour spent in close proximity to Scott or Isaac, or worse - Scott and Isaac - grates on his nerves pretty significantly. Allison and Boyd work well as a pair because they’re both introverts, and with one another there’s never any pressure to be anything else.

It’s worryingly easy to forget that Boyd and Erica are both teenagers to whom Derek is technically a legal guardian. Erica doesn’t turn eighteen until next August, Boyd a month later. Mostly they take care of one another in all of the important ways, and all Derek has to do is keep up the steady running of the safe, supportive environment that he works hard to maintain for Isaac. Boyd does the cooking most nights, and breakfast is a haphazard affair at best, but Derek rules lunches with an iron fist. He’s not quite at that packed lunches level, but during the school year he gives them money to buy whatever they want, and in summer Derek makes lunch for the whole pack almost every day. Most of them don’t have to worry all that much about being healthy, but Derek makes sure they eat well anyway. Part of leading a pack is making sure everyone has what they need to train hard, to stay strong.

The loft has enough rooms for Peter, Cora, Isaac, Erica, Boyd and Derek to each have their own bedroom, with two spares besides, all gathered together in a long L-shaped corridor that leads off of the kitchen. At first, Derek always slept in the bed that’s tucked into a nook in the living room, for reasons of safety and security, but as the summer progresses he spends more and more nights in his own bedroom, content to know that everyone is home and everyone is safe. He wishes, as time passes, that the entire pack could live here, and most nights see the loft house at least one extra guest, but maybe when the Hale family house is rebuilt, Derek thinks, although that’s one thing he still refuses to let himself hope for or look forward to.

Stiles has never spent the night at the loft, and that’s probably for the best.

 

____

 

Derek would miss any of the pack who had to go away for a few days, for any reason, but he does not do well with Stiles gone.

Scott seems to sense that now is the time to capitalize on Derek’s complete lack of poise.

“So what was up with you healing Stiles? How come I can’t do that? Is that a born-wolf thing?” he appears above Derek over the weight bench, but telegraphs his entrance by clattering noisily up the stairs.

“I have no idea, and I told him the same thing. I’ve never heard of it happening before. I’m still not even totally convinced that that was happened. Who’s to say he didn’t heal himself? He’s the one with the magic.”

Instead of spotting Derek or anything, Scott chooses to lean on the bar of his weights instead.

“I don’t know,” he says, sceptical, “I’m pretty sure he’d know what went down, and he says it was you. He says he felt you heal him. Stiles doesn’t lie, Derek. Not unless he has a reason to.”

Derek is well aware of Stiles’ strange and near-indecipherable code of morality, but for once he wasn’t questioning it.

“I’m not calling him a liar, Scott. I’m just saying I don’t know any more about what happened than he does, than you do.”

“Fine,” Scott says, clearly unsatisfied with the answer, but seemingly convinced that he’s not going to get any more out of Derek, because he disappears to start his morning pull-up race with Isaac.

Derek is relieved to get out of that particular conversation so easily, but he knows he can’t run from it forever. Eventually it’s a conversation he’s going to have to have with Stiles, maybe with the entire pack depending on what happens next. Knowing Derek’s luck and evident lack thereof, he’s going to have to heal Stiles in front of everyone one day, and won’t that be a doozie to explain. ‘Yeah that happens, you guys. I’ve suspected for some time now that Stiles is my true north. This guy right here? Totally my soulmate. Surprise.’ Derek isn’t surprised by any of this, not really, because this summer as a freak accident aside, that’s exactly what his life is like. Impossible.

He hopes he doesn’t ever have to tell Stiles. He hopes that eventually the tide will turn and the way he feels about Stiles will get easier rather than continuing as the increasingly distressing thing that it has become.

But Derek Hale is still Derek Hale, and one blissfully peaceful summer can’t undo years of habit beaten into him by broken bones and a burned-up, battered heart.

It’s an empty kind of hope.

 

____

 

Derek wakes up on the Tuesday that Stiles is due back instantly aware of what today is and what it means. He’s been agitated all weekend, nervous and restless to such an extent that the entire pack has picked up on it, although no-one seems to have realized why he’s all but clawing up the walls, desperate to have Stiles safely back inside his territory if not snug and comfortable in the cradle of Derek’s arms where Derek really needs him.

He pulls on his jeans for the sake of any humans he might find in his loft in the early morning, because wolves have all but zero sense of modesty or privacy when it comes to their bodies. It’s different for the bitten wolves, but gradually they are learning a different sense of connection to their body and what it can do, and already they’re shirtless more often than not. The humans still make fun of that tendency, though, and Derek absentmindedly makes a note to find a shirt once he’s had something to eat, but he stops dead in his tracks, all thoughts of food and clothes gone in an instant when he comes upon Stiles curled up in his chair by the window.

Stiles is back. And he’s here. He’s looking through some kind of blueprints, and he’s wearing glasses. This combination is wildly overwhelming, Derek finds.

“How … when did you get back? And why didn’t I notice?”

Derek can hear Stiles’ heartbeat from miles away. When he picks up his scent he can barely concentrate on anything else. And yet here he is, inside Derek’s home and there somehow without Derek having noticed.

Stiles looks up and smiles at him, smiles like he’s pleased to see Derek, and in an instant all of Derek’s senses are flooded by him. He smells like an entirely different kind of home, like some sure safety and comfort that Derek has never known. Derek can feel the thrum of his body, the light and steady beat of his heart. He feels like he’s breathing again for the first time in days, and he has to grab on to the door jamb, his claws sunk deep into the wood to keep him upright when his knees threaten to give out with some bone deep kind of relief. A singing, bright kind of joy. And that’s just how it feels to be in the same room as Stiles after a couple days without him. Derek is almost, almost grateful that they’ll never be together, because if this is what being near Stiles is like, he probably wouldn’t survive so much as holding his hand.

“Sorry, was that -- was that too much? I’ve been working on masking my body but you -- did I do it wrong? Why do you look like you’re going to throw up?”

Stiles makes to get up and come closer, concern loud across his face, but Derek keeps him at bay with a wave of his hand.

“I’m fine, it’s. It’s just a little dazing first thing in the morning. Give my senses like an hour to settle in before you do that again.”

Derek takes a second to gather himself, closes his eyes and breathes in through his mouth rather than his nose, lectures his hands on how they don’t get to even think about touching Stiles. It’s a lost cause, because when Derek opens his eyes again he finds himself at Stiles’ side, his hands on Stiles’ shoulders and his nose buried where Stiles’ hair is longest.

“Woah,” Stiles says. His body shivers under Derek’s palms, but his heartbeat stays steady, only picks up a little, so Derek knows he didn’t really startle him. “I went out of town and all I got was shirtless alpha snuffles. Okay, then. I’d have settled for a hug, but whatever does it for you, man.”

That’s not really an invitation, Derek knows it’s not, but it’s too easy to make it one. His hands move to Stiles’ armpits, and he’s urging Stiles to his feet so quickly that Stiles has no choice but to drop his blueprints on the floor. When he’s standing at his full height, toe to toe and on Derek’s eye level, Derek yanks him into a hug. Stiles’ arms go around Derek’s middle and Derek’s arms loop back around Stiles’ shoulders in a tight circle. Stiles presses his face to Derek’s shoulder, and it’s so easy for Derek to rub his stubbled cheek against the side of Stiles’ neck, to mark Stiles in a way that he really, really shouldn’t.

“Wow. This is. Wow,” Stiles says, his mouth warm against Derek’s bare skin, and Derek’s wolf rumbles in his chest, is so deeply satisfied by Stiles’ proximity that Derek himself makes some kind of a noise that almost matches it. “Hey, I’m back. I’m home. I’m totally fine. Are you -- were you worried? I told you everything was going to be fine, Derek.”

Derek forces himself to step back and let Stiles go, and the effort that that takes is unsurprisingly considerable.

“No, I know. It’s … it’s the first time anyone went outside our territory. It’s just -- just a wolf thing, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Stiles says, letting his arms drop but not making all that much of an effort to step back, standing his ground like he fully intends to occupy Derek’s every space and stay there, “Who couldn’t stand to be hugged more, right?” He’s smiling, and he looks relaxed in a way that Derek hasn’t seen in him in months. He’s spread out in a way that exudes ease and confidence, comfortable in his own skin to a degree that seems real and tangible for the first time since Gerard took him and hurt him. He takes off his glasses and drops them on the table, and when Derek turns and continues on his journey to the kitchen Stiles is following, trailing after Derek through the loft on bare feet, his shoes kicked off at the door.

Derek feels like he is the one who has come home.

“So what did I miss? War? Bloodshed? Arranged marriages? The usual?”

Derek bites back a smile, bites back most of the things he wants to ask Stiles, but can’t contain them all.

“Did you … you seem … you’re different. Did something happen with Deaton?”

Stiles hops up onto the counter next to where Derek is piling what he needs to make a fruit smoothie, and it’s terrifying to see him like this. He’s like the Stiles he was before summer started, but the person he’s been since then too. He’s like those two halves of himself, finally put properly together instead of rattling around as broken pieces of the greater him, sides at war from one hour to the next.

“I didn’t like … find my center or whatever, if that’s what you’re asking. But I found some things I’d lost, I guess. The magic stuff is helping in ways I didn’t know it would.” Stiles pauses, and curls his fingers around the edges of the counter until his knuckles go white, “You know how … remember that time we talked about how to live in now, instead of in all the stuff we’ve lost? Well, you talked about it, I guess. It was when --”

“I remember, Stiles,” Derek says, thinking about how easy it is to acknowledge one of the toughest conversations he’s ever had, the small, steady steps they’ve all continued to take since then.

“Well I’m figuring that out, maybe. After Gerard, and Jackson and Lydia, and Scott and Isaac … I felt kind of … worthless, I guess.” It kills Derek to hear Stiles say that about himself. It makes Derek want to kill. But he knows that what Stiles needs and has needed is an alpha who will listen, an alpha who respects him enough to hear him out. “I felt like I’d lost everything I thought I was. I had all of these dumb fantasies about saving the day, being the hero. Solving the puzzle and getting the girl and being that guy instead of the sidekick for once, you know? But when all of that went down at once, I felt like I wasn’t even the sidekick anymore. Like I didn’t matter at all, couldn’t do anything well enough to count.”

“And now?” Derek is all but clinging to the dregs of his control.

“The magic stuff helped. I couldn’t even use mountain ash anymore when we started all this, did you know that? That time with the alpha pack, I had to talk Danny through it because my belief in my myself was gone, left the building. But I’ve been finding it again slowly, and this weekend I was really useful to Deaton. Useful all by myself. It made a lot of smaller things to click into place.”

“Such as?” Derek probably shouldn’t push him, but Stiles will stop talking when he needs to, he never gives more than he means to.

“The Scott and Isaac thing, I guess. It’s been easier, but there were still moments when it would get to me, feeling like I’d been replaced. That’s not really how it is, though. Everything shifted when the pack came together, we all became part of something bigger. That was … we found something, we didn’t lose anything. And it’s the same with Lydia.”

“So you don’t …” Derek can’t believe he’s still asking this question, but he can want to hear Stiles say it, even if he can’t hope that it means anything for him.

He laughs, his grip on the counter top loosening. He reaches across Derek to steal a slice of the orange he’s cutting into segments, and chews on it as he talks.

“God no. I never did. I mean, I loved her. I still love her. But the same way I love Danny. The same way I love Allison. I’m still a little terrified of her sometimes, but I sleep easier at night knowing she’s on our side.”

Stiles is sitting on Derek’s kitchen counter, sucking fruit juice off his fingers, sharing his morning with Derek - sharing his feelings with Derek - and the relief that floods Derek is so overwhelming that he has to do something with it before he drowns in it.

“Everyone feels that way about you, Stiles. Even without the magic, with nothing at all, you’re a fundamental part of everything we’ve been getting right. It’s up to you to decide how you want to matter, but you always do. You always did, and I’m so sorry about what Gerard did to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop him, but nothing like that will ever happen again. I’m going to keep you safe. I’m going to make sure --”

“Woah, hold your horses,” Stiles interrupts, his heels gone still against the cabinet door he’d just been kicking a nervous rhythm against, his hand banded around the fist Derek is now clutching the knife in. “That wasn’t your fault. Haven’t we had the ‘only the stupid things you yourself do are your fault’ talk already? I appreciate your gratitude, and I appreciate the lengths you’ll go to for pack, but I’m not just your responsibility, this isn’t all on you. You’re my responsibility too, and I’m going to keep _you_ safe, I’m always going to --”

If it hadn’t been for the ‘always’, Derek probably would have made it out of this conversation unscathed. He’d have spent the better part of today trying his hardest to deal with everything Stiles just said, because it’s everything he’s never even hoped he’d get to hear. But Stiles goes with ‘always’, reminds Derek that this isn’t forever, or even for a very long time. He has until Stiles goes away to school next fall, maybe a little more than that if he’s lucky. He only has this, he only has _Stiles_ for now.

And that’s why he has to let the knife he’s holding fall to the chopping board with a clatter, and step away from the counter only to step right back up to it, this time in the space between Stiles’ spread knees.

Stiles’ breath hitches, and Derek knows he shouldn’t, he knows he can’t, but he leans in and takes a fistful of Stiles’ shirt anyway, he pulls Stiles to him and kisses him because he doesn’t know how not to.

For a second Stiles freezes, and Derek’s heart stops. But then Stiles’ knees lock around Derek’s hips, and his hands fall to Derek’s waist, and his mouth opens under Derek’s like Derek’s lips are some kind of key.

“Fuck. Derek,” he somehow manages to murmur, and Derek has no idea how, because he’s kissing Derek back, he’s kissing Derek like he’s starved for it and he’s saying Derek’s name with something like longing. His hands skim up along Derek’s sides, sweep up over the curve of his back to his shoulders and then all the way back down again, his palms pressed flat to Derek’s lower back, his fingers digging in and pulling Derek closer. Derek doesn’t know when it happened, but he has one arm locked around Stiles’ waist, the other buried in his hair, and in the grand scheme of things it barely matters at all that Stiles’ hair is long enough to tug at, now, because his tongue is in Derek’s mouth, his heart is beating so fast and full it’s practically humming against Derek’s chest, and Derek is so happy he has forgotten how to breathe.

“Yo! Derek!” Jackson yells, slamming the front door behind him, and in an instant Derek is on the other side of the kitchen, looking across the room at a debauched, panting Stiles like he’s watching the scene from somewhere far beyond it, somewhere outside of his own body.

Jackson pokes his head into the kitchen, and gives Stiles a funny kind of once-over, but he doesn’t comment, he doesn’t start yelling about calling the sheriff.

“Scott’s downstairs, man, if you want to beat him to the pull-up bar you’re going to have to get a move on.” He’s gone again in an instant, and Derek still hasn’t taken a breath.

He gulps in air for a second, and looks at his own feet instead of looking at Stiles. He takes a minute to pull his head out of his goddamn ass and then he crosses the kitchen again to put the lid on the blender and switch it on.

“That can’t ever happen again,” he says, ducked in close so Stiles can hear him over the noise. “You’re pack,” he says, because that matters, even if it’s not the whole truth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. I’d die for you,” he says, because Stiles has reached inside him and pulled those kinds of feelings out into the open, out into the very center of Derek’s chest where he can’t ignore them any more.

Stiles scrubs at his face with his hands, and elbows Derek out of his way so he can clamber down off the counter top.

“You can’t kiss me because you have to be prepared to sacrifice your life for mine, instead,” Stiles says, his voice a low, dull monotone.

He starts to walk away, but he turns back before he reaches the door.

“You know, you’ve come a long way. We all have. But that doesn’t mean you’re never wrong anymore. It doesn’t mean that you’re not still wrong about some of the stuff you got wrong before.”

Derek passes him on his way upstairs, and he doesn’t let himself look too long, because something loosens in him at the sight of Stiles still here, curled back up in Derek’s chair in a way that seems stiffer now, but probably isn’t actually.

Derek didn’t fuck up so badly that he lost Stiles before he had to, and that’s what matters.

 

____

 

Peter is pack, but he still isn’t trusted by any of them.

If Lydia had asked, Derek would have found a way to keep Peter away from her, away from them all.

But Peter is useful, and Peter hasn’t crossed any of the lines that each and every member of the pack decided where and when to place between themselves and him.

Peter still isn’t trusted, but he hasn’t given them further cause to doubt him, and that in itself is an important kind of progress.

 

____

 

Sometimes, Derek catches glimpses of the uncle he grew up with, the uncle who had been his uncle.

Sometimes Peter’s jealousy of Derek is thick enough for Derek to almost taste, and that’s a frustrating kind of nostalgia to fall into, but it’s nostalgia for a time before Peter had ever really hurt anyone.

The best and worst days are the ones when Derek is reminded of the uncle he’d lost, the man Peter had grown into before his whole family was taken from him.

Peter had been a good father, a good husband, the kind of uncle Derek had looked to often and with love, for family support.

Derek doesn’t know how big the parts of that person that remain are, or if they’ll ever be any bigger again, but unless they start to fade further, Derek’s pack is happy to keep Peter close.

 

____

 

Erica is happiest in the days following Stiles’ return. She’s protective of Stiles in a way that reminds Derek of how he treats Isaac, which makes very little sense when you take into account the fact that they’re basically the same age, Stiles a little older even.

But Erica doesn’t treat Stiles like a child, or fool herself into thinking she could protect him. She sticks close to him and he’s a kind of comfort for her that few of them understand - he’s a reminder of the good parts of the seldomly good life she had before this, she tells Derek.

From the beginning, the very first beginning when Laura had died and Derek had to start all over again, he’d thought that his pack was only ever going to be as strong as he was, as successful a pack as he was a capable leader.

Now Derek sees that for all that he’s improved as an alpha, all he’s really done to get there is improve as a person and as a friend. He has begun to learn to trust and to love and to take care of what’s important to him, to show how he feels even if he still can’t trust that this or anything else is forever or for good.

Derek’s pack aren’t stronger now because he as their alpha is stronger.

Derek’s pack is stronger because they’ve each learned to take care of one another, they’ve all taken that leap of faith to trust in this unorthodox family that they all needed and wanted to find among themselves.

Derek is stronger, happier, and healed because his pack teach him how to be what they deserve.

 

____

 

Cora takes to the new wolves and the new humans faster than she takes to Derek, and Derek gets that.

New people are a chance to start again, a chance to build on territory that never housed anything else.

Cora doesn’t blame Derek for what happened to their family, but she still hasn’t told him where she’s been all this time, or how she wound up travelling with the alpha pack. She hasn’t told him why she decided to come back, but she has made it clear she’s here to stay.

Derek’s relationship with Cora is as new as her growing friendships with everyone else, but what he can’t always clearly tell from day to day is whether the memory of who they used to be to one another is helping or hindering what they’re trying to find with one another now.

Cora isn’t quite family again yet, and whether that’s because she isn’t ready or he isn’t ready or both, Derek doesn’t know.

Cora is pack again, and Derek knows that and trusts that with a sense of conviction so sure it’s almost pride in himself and his accomplishments.

 

____

 

They almost make it the entire summer without injury, and without threat.

Almost.

 

____

 

Derek hates having to do this, but Stiles isn’t answering his phone, and Cora insists, so together they go tumbling through Stiles’ bedroom window and it’s only the steady beat of his heart that keeps Derek from a blind panic.

“Well hi there,” Stiles says, turning away from his desk and spitting a highlighter cap out of his mouth to smile at Cora.

“Hey Derek,” he adds, his smile slipping.

“Stiles, we need to go through everything you have on banshees.”

 

____

 

The sheriff doesn’t know about what Derek is, or who the pack are, but he takes their invasion of his home that weekend in his stride nonetheless.

They’re still not entirely sure what they’re dealing with, or how this will play out, but that just means that research is the order of the day, and Derek needs to stick close to Team Research while they work on cracking this when the threat is still likely at large and apparently attracted to homes that have been hit hard by loss.

Sheriff Stilinski stops by Stiles’ room to see what the racket is, but doesn’t look all that surprised to find Derek, Isaac and Scott all piled into Stiles’ bedroom. This makes Derek wonder what exactly Stiles has told his father, although he remains all too aware of what he hasn’t and can’t tell him.

They work hard through the night, and the one after that, and after three days of reading that is only interrupted to eat and argue, they’re all a little crazy with it, and only marginally closer to figuring anything out.

Lydia and Danny are here for a lot of it, and Allison drops by to bring them small pieces of information from her father and her own family’s library, but they still haven’t found a definitive method for killing banshees, although they’ve all looked at more horrifying sketches of them than Derek thinks anyone has ever needed to see.

Eventually, predictably, it’s Stiles that finds the answer. It’s buried in the archives of Peter’s laptop, in files that belonged to Derek’s father.

Unfortunately, it also dictates that they wait until August is over before they implement it, because Irish mythology relies heavily on the turn of seasons.

But they know what they’re facing now, and they know what they have to do.

Derek celebrates the breakthrough by balling his jacket up under his head and starting to doze off on Stiles’ floor.

Stiles gets up and cracks his back, and heads for the bathroom moaning obscenely about how much he has missed showering.

It’s just unfortunate timing that sees the sheriff step out of his bedroom right as Isaac is following Stiles into the bathroom, leaving the door open behind him and cheerfully engaging Stiles in conversation as he showers and Isaac pees.

Sheriff Stilinski looks from the direction of the bathroom back to Derek, lying on his teenage son’s bedroom floor, and his eyebrows lift so high on his forehead Derek is reminded of Stiles’ dogged insistence on finally figuring out where the wolves’ eyebrows go when they shift.

Derek has no answer that he can give for the questions that must be running through the sheriff’s mind right now, and he’s too tired to make his face look as nonthreatening as he wishes he could, but he’s pretty sure exhaustion takes care of that for him.

Isaac passes the sheriff on his way back from the bathroom, and gives him a cheery ‘good morning, sir’ and the last thing Derek hears before he passes out is the sheriff heading downstairs, saying to himself in a quiet murmur that only werewolf hearing can pick up, “Well. At least he’s making friends.”

 

____

 

For now, the nature of the game means taking turns to keep watch over the loft and Stiles’ place, because it’s easy enough for Jackson and Lydia and Danny and Allison to convince their parents to let them stay over at Derek’s, but patience for his son’s new found friendships or no, there’s zero chance that the sheriff is letting Stiles stay out all night in anyone’s house other than Scott’s.

Derek and Erica and Jackson make up the brunt of the cover for Stiles, and on the mornings after their watches, Erica and Stiles will show up at the loft with coffee and donuts for everyone, Jackson will appear with Stiles on his back, still in his pajama pants sometimes, sleepily grumbling about how Jackson hogs the covers.

Derek keeps watch from the roof, and he doesn’t know if Stiles even knows he’s there, because he never asks, and Derek never knocks to come inside.

 

____

 

Training continues as usual, and with Stiles around more for ease of protection, he half-heartedly joins them in their morning work outs, surprising Derek with how well he knows his way around gym equiptment, and the sweats he hardly ever breaks. It shouldn’t be that shocking, because Stiles is quickly growing into his height, filling out and gaining the kind of muscle that comes from hard work. Derek just doesn’t know who he’s working out with, because he’s not doing it with the pack.

Stiles is still here less than everyone else is, even if he’s better in the ways that matter, and maybe devoting his time to magic, maybe avoiding Derek just for now.

He’s here, and he’s still pushing himself harder than he should, because Derek is reading in the living room one afternoon when he hears his cry of pain and smells the air get sour with the scent of shock and discomfort, the iron tang of blood. He finds Stiles and Isaac upstairs on the sparring mats, Isaac’s face drawn with remorse, Stiles lecturing him on how this wasn’t his fault even as he holds his hand over the slash across his ankle that doesn’t seem to be deep, but is bleeding generously.

Derek shushes Isaac’s apologies gently, and carefully lifts Stiles into his arms and carries him downstairs to the bathroom and the pack’s impressively stocked first aid kit.

“I could’ve walked, you know,” Stiles grumbles, but he’s always pissy when he gets hurt, so Derek doesn’t take it personally. He’s nowhere near as bad a patient as Boyd.

“I know, but I don’t want you bleeding all over my floors,” Derek answers absentmindedly, folding the leg of Stiles’ jeans up to under his knee and taking his foot in hand, running it under cold water in the tub.

The process of cleaning the scrape is strangely soothing for Derek, something in methodically going through the motions putting him at ease and keeping him calm after the panic that always comes when someone in the pack gets hurt, the panic is that greater for humans, greater still for Stiles.

But then the time comes to apply a bandage, and Derek is so lost in the peaceful process of it all that he doesn’t think before he lifts Stiles’ leg back onto the bathroom floor and pulls Stiles to him by the knees, his hand hooked under one to bring Stiles’ injured foot across his lap.

Stiles’ breath gets shallow, but not so much so that it’s a cause for concern, and Derek breathes through his mouth, doesn’t want to let himself catch Stiles’ scent when he’s this close and they’re shut up in a small room together.

Derek finishes dressing the scrape with a small bandage, and can’t resist the urge to run a soothing hand up over the curve of Stiles’ calf.

“Does it still hurt?” he asks, thinking he’ll take some of the pain away if it does.

“Almost every day,” Stiles answers, and when Derek lifts his head to look Stiles is staring straight back at him.

“Stiles,” he starts, but can’t finish.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and then he says no more.

 

____

 

In ten days the school semester starts again, and everyone is here every single day, soaking up the last of their freedom before fall sets in and classes become the staple of their days again.

Derek has learned to differentiate the sound of their footsteps as they shuffle through the loft late at night or first thing in the morning; Boyd’s feet light and bare, Isaac’s slow and quiet, Jackson’s heavy and precise, Lydia’s muffled by the cushion of her fluffy slippers, Cora’s too once she compliments Lydia on hers.

Grocery shopping is a fraught and strategic affair, because Erica writes the best lists but she’s inclined to overlook things when they’re actually at the store, and Scott spends the entire time filling the cart with breakfast cereals they don’t need. Derek prefers to shop by himself, and he learns to enjoy the speculative, largely approving looks he gets from other shoppers as a man in his early twenties clearly stocking up for a large family.

Allison has stolen no less than four of Stiles’ plaid shirts over the course of the summer, and Stiles compliments her on how good she looks in them, styled as dresses over leggings. Derek secretly thinks they looked better on Stiles, and he’s starting to wonder just how well he’s keeping that secret these days.

Peter apologizes to Lydia in front of the entire pack one night. Solemn and sincere, over dinner. Lydia only nods, but it’s an important thing to hear.

Some mornings Derek wakes up and Cora is asleep at the end of his bed, curled up in a ball the way she used to at the foot of their parent’s bed when she was small. They don’t talk about it out loud, but Derek leans over her as he gets up to start his day, and folds the blanket down over her, presses a kiss into her hair and takes a deep breath when he smells more than one kind of family on her skin.

Scott has read and discarded a stack of books nearly as tall as him this summer, and Derek doesn’t know why, but he’s pleased that Scott keeps them at the loft. The living room has become an open, shared space in every sense of the word, and everyone’s things have a place there, neatly overlapping. Scott and Derek make a promise to one another to always tell the truth, no matter how hard that is to say or to hear, no matter what kind of threat they’re under, and this is a promise that Derek doesn’t have to make to the rest of the pack, because it’s one that’s never broken, there.

Stiles shows up carrying stronger and stronger strains of people who aren’t pack, friends he must be making outside of it, and Derek wants to ask, but he doesn’t want to know. The bed that Derek used to sleep in in the living room has unofficially becomes Stiles’ when he stays, or when he naps in the late afternoon, and Derek keeps his distance from that corner of the loft because he doesn’t want to know what sheets smell like when they’re soaked in the combined scents of himself and the person he has fall in love with.

Everyone has grown this summer; grown up and grown closer, grown into themselves and into who they want to be for one another.

Derek has worked hard and he’s determined to keep that up when he looks around at what three short months have done for him and his pack, bigger today than he ever hoped it could be.

Derek never wanted to be an alpha, and he never wanted his own pack. But as they come and go through his space and through the day, touching him hello and texting him from downstairs to criticize his taste in music, complimenting the food he makes for them and thanking him for the space he clears and keeps for them, Derek is quietly, vehemently proud.

 

____

 

It’s one week until most of the pack begins their last year of high school, and they’ve got a banshee running around town on the loose.

But they’ve also got each other, and it’s a start.

 

____  
____  
____


End file.
